Daniel successfully defended his PhD thesis work on "Investigating the cis-regulatory mechanisms underlying neuronal imprinted expression." We thank Daniel for all his contributions to the lab and wish him the best of luck in his next career steps at Intellia Therapeutics!

This grant aims to investigate the role of SNORD116 in ribosome biology. For more details on this project and others funded by FPWR, a blog with the funded descriptions and a link to the recorded webinar presented by Dr. Theresa Strong, Director of Research Programs at FPWR can be found here.

A new study led by Daniel Loftus of the Whipple Lab has found that differences in maternal and paternal genomes in embryonic stem cells shape gene expression in neurons. The study, which appears in the latest issue of the journal Genes & Development, delves into the 3D structure of a genome region called Peg13-Kcnk9.

The Whipple lab enjoyed the MCB fall kick off celebration to welcome new students on campus. Graduate students interested in rotating should contact Amanda Whipple.

Congratulations to Courtney Whilden for being awarded an NIH F31 fellowship! This award will support her project on snoRNAs.

Carlie has been awarded HCRP (Harvard College Research Program) funding to pursue her work on the subnuclear localization of imprinted genes in the lab this summer.

Udbhav Chitta was the first member of the Whipple lab in 2019 and has been accepted into the biomedical graduate program at UMass Medical School. We are grateful to his contributions to the lab and are excited he will remain nearby. Warm wishes!

While he will be sorely missed in the Whipple lab this summer, we are proud of Aditya for seizing this opportunity to widen his skill sets. Look out for his graduate school applications this fall!

The HCRP will fund Carlie's independent research in the Whipple lab to investigate subnuclear localization of imprinted loci.

Aditya Wirawan presented his research at the National Collegiate Research Conference. Watch out for his graduate school applications this fall!

Join us in welcoming Amanda Leinbaugh to the team! Amanda will provide administrative support for Dr. Whipple and the lab.

We bid a warm farewell to Daniel Blackwell as he follows his dreams in LA. We thank Daniel for helping us with the administrative side of getting our lab up and running since 2019.

This award will support the work of graduate student Courtney Whilden on "Investigating Satiety Circuitry Changes in Prader-Willi Syndrome." Experiments are already underway!

MCB faculty Amanda Whipple has received an R35 Maximizing Investigators’ Research Award (MIRA) from the NIH. The award provides five years of funding to promising early career PIs, with the goal of ensuring recipients’ stability and flexibility as their labs branch out in pursuit of new research questions…

Congratulations to Aditya on his successful presentation at the Harvard Undergraduate Research Opportunities in Science fair today.

We are welcoming a new undergraduate in the lab, Carlie McGrath, a junior concentrating in Integrative Biology. Carlie will be working under the mentorship of Min on gene regulatory mechanisms controlling imprinted gene expression.

The Whipple lab is now accepting applications for a Research Assistant. Please apply through the Harvard jobs portal linked above.

Simon joined the Whipple lab in 2019 as an undergraduate, completed his senior thesis, and then following graduation worked full-time as a Research Associate. In addition to keeping the lab operating smoothly, his experimental and computational work was critical to our ongoing studies on snoRNAs. He will be sorely missed by all, but we're looking forward to a lab reunion in Austria some day!

Areas of interest: RNA biology, neurobiology, computational biology

Our work balances hypothesis-driven research using established methods with exploratory research using new high-throughput methods. This enables us to test data driven models while remaining open to unexpected, paradigm-shifting discoveries. Read our ad here.

The Herchel Smith Harvard Undergraduate Research Program is a competitive award supporting a select group of high-potential undergraduates conducting a promising summer research project. Aditya will continue working in the Whipple lab on an independent project to identify novel snoRNA binding proteins in neurons.

We thank Thareendra De Zoysa for his contribution to all aspects of the Whipple Lab. As the first postdoc in the lab, he served to greatly enhance both our science and our lab environment. He made significant contributions to identifying targets of orphan snoRNAs. Thareendra will be missed by all but we are so excited for his future!

Congratulations to Courtney Whilden for receiving the Simmons Award from the Harvard Center for Biological Imaging. Courtney will use these funds to support snoRNA imaging experiments.

MCB, CPB, AND NEUROSCIENCE CONCENTRATORS INDUCTED INTO PHI BETA KAPPA (PBK) HONOR SOCIETY

Each spring, the Harvard chapter of the Phi Beta Kappa (PBK) academic honor society elects members of the graduating class to join the prestigious organization, along with those inducted as part of the annual “Junior 24” in the spring and “Senior 48” in the fall.

Overbeck Christian Takou Mbah, a former undergraduate trainee in the Whipple lab, will attend Stanford University School of Medicine in the fall. Congratulations to Christian on this hard earned achievement!

Courtney Whilden, a graduate student from the Program in Neuroscience, will join the Whipple lab to complete her doctoral research. We are excited to welcome Courtney to the team and to see the Whipple lab continue to grow!

Afiya Quryshi joins the Whipple lab after receiving funding from the PRISE Summer Fellowship. The Program for Research in Science and Engineering (PRISE) aims to build community and stimulate creativity among Harvard undergraduate researchers. Afiya will work alongside Daniel Loftus on campus this summer. She is the second undergraduate to join the Whipple lab under this scholarship. We look forward to having her join the team!

MCB Faculty Amanda Whipple has been selected as a recipient of the Klingenstein-Simons Fellowship, which supports promising early-career researchers in neurobiology. Klingenstein-Simons Awardees receive $225,000 in funding over the course of three years.

Congratulations to Daniel Loftus for receiving the Simmons Award from the Harvard Center for Biological Imaging. Daniel will use these funds to determine the localization of imprinted non-coding RNAs in neurons.

MCB faculty Amanda Whipple has been chosen by the Rita Allen Foundation as one of five Rita Allen Scholars in the Class of 2020 and the sole recipient of the 2020 Milton E. Cassel Scholarship. Each Rita Allen scholar receives $500,000 over five years, and each Milton Cassel scholar receives an additional $50,000 over the five years.

MCB Faculty Amanda Whipple has been chosen to become 2020 George W. Merck Fellow. Named in honor of the pharmaceutical magnate, George W. Merck Fellowships are designed to address the funding needs of “rising stars in biology.” Each recipient receives $460,000 over two years to pay researchers’ salaries and cover the cost of experiments. Read more