Happenings in the lab -
Spring 2023: Will be a fun summer -
Welcome to Annie, Pedro and Christina! Annie and Pedro are both stellar MD/PhD students rotating in the lab over the Summer, and Christina is an undergraduate at Howard. The lab was awarded two major grants from the NIH, and Raj was promoted to Associate Prof w/ tenure!
Winter 2023: Great start to the year! 
Absolutely great end to 2022 and start to 2023. Zach was selected for the Penn Dev Bio Training Grant! Congrats Zach! Congrats to Parisha, Ashley, Garrett and our friends in the Pollard Lab for our paper getting published at Genome Biology! Parisha worked closely with Kathleen and Katie G. in the Pollard laboratory at UCSF/Gladstone Institutes to develop new approaches to identify different types of LADs across a variety of cell types. We're happy to welcome Emily to our team - Emily will help with all things informatics! Zach was appointed to the Dev Bio T32 - a great opportunity for him! Finally, congrats to Garrett and Kaitlyn for presenting posters at the annual ASCI meeting in Chicago!
Spring-Summer 2022: Garrett^2 + ZG, KS - congrats!
Raj was elected to the ASCI and was grateful to be selected to give a talk at the Annual Joint Meeting because he was awarded the 2021 Seldin-Smith Award. Garrett and Rachel did a phenomenal job presenting their work at the Joint Meeting poster session (Kudos to GTS for winning a travel award)! Rachel also set the bar with her oral and poster presentations at the annual Sarnoff meeting! Kaitlyn and Zach did a stellar job on their prelim exams - Congrats both! Finally, Garrett Hill joins us from UMBC as an undergraduate researcher - welcome Garrett!
Winter 2022: Great end to the year and start to 2022 -
Ashley was awarded an F31 from the NIH and won a poster award at the Epigenetics Institute Retreat!!! Way to go AK!!!! Ricardo, Wonho, and Nikhita's paper came out to Nature Genetics and got some great press!! The work was also featured in a perspective published in Nature Genetics. Zach Gardner and Kaitlyn Shen - two phenomenal MD/PhD students recently joined the lab. Welcome Zach and Kaitlyn and we're so excited you're part of the team! Our paper with our friends in Arjun Raj's lab was accepted at Genome Biology- Congrats Connie!
Summer 2021: Busy busy busy -
It's been an amazing run for the lab: Parisha's paper with Jane Lv in the Musunuru lab was published in Cell Stem Cell, Wonho was awarded an AHA postdoctoral fellowship!!!! The lab was excited to see our paper with the Raj laboratory (lead by Ian Mellis) come out in Cell Systems about identifying new determinants of lineage plasticity. Raj was humbled to learn that he had won the ASCI's 2021 Seldin-Smith Award for Pioneering Research, given in the memory of two giants in the field of medicine - Drs. Donald Seldin and Holly Smith. (Penn interviewed him about it here.) Moreover, Ricardo defended his thesis work in stellar fashion - Congrats RLS!!! Finally, we're sad to see Eom leave us to return to Korea, but we're excited that Garrett and Rachel have joined the team and Zach Gardner, an MD/PhD student is rotating this Fall in the lab. Amazing work all the way around!
Winter 2020: A bit of good news-
The lab is doing its best to take the ups and downs of Covid. In some good news, the lab was awarded a U01 with the Cremins-Phillips, Lakadamyali, Vahedi and Joyce laboratories at Penn by the 4DN consortium. We're honored and excited to team up with this awesome group of investigators (and friends) to understand how genome organization impacts human development and disease! Also, Ricardo helped lead a study published in Circulation with Arun Padmanabhan (faculty at UCSF and co-mentored by Raj) and Miki Alexanian uncovering a new role for BRD4 in cardiac myocyte mitochondrial biogenesis. Wonho also played an important role to show the specific interaction between BRD4 and cardiac transcription factors. It was great fun to collaborate with Arun, Miki and Deepak!
June 2020: Ups and downs-
Like so many — the lab has been hit by Covid. We're doing our best to make it through and extremely grateful for our HCW on the frontlines. On a bright note — Ashley was just awarded a spot on the Genetics T32 and Bailey, the newest addition to the lab, was awarded a spot on the CVI/Cardiology T32! Welcome to Kaitlyn Shen, an MD/PhD student, who will be rotating with us through the summer!
December 2019: Keeping the momentum going and WOW!!!
The lab is on a roll. Multiple papers have come out including collaborations with the Capelson, Prosser, Song and Epstein laboratories! It's been wonderful working with great colleagues at Penn. Most excitingly, Raj and the lab are so excited and humbled to be awarded a Transformative Research Award (TR01) from the NIH Director's Office with Arjun Raj and his laboratory. The Raj and Jain labs have been having a lot of fun collaborating to develop new techniques to reveal the molecular determinants of cellular plasticity.
June 2019: Wow RLS!
Ricardo was just awarded an F31 (and set the curve) and Liam won the Jumpstart for Juniors Research Grant! Way to go RLS and Liam! Also, we're happy that Ashley has joined the lab formally and welcome Gwang Eom (Eom), a visiting professor from South Korea. Ashley will be identifying how specific epigenetic factors regulate the localization of chromatin, and Eom will be developing tools to "see" specific pieces of chromatin.
March 2019: Spring almost here, but killer winter —
Congrats to Qiaohong and Ricardo! Our lab helped lead a study with the Frank and Morrisey labs that was just published in PNAS! The work reveals how progenitor specification occurs during lung development. Also, the lab is psyched — they were just awarded an R01 from the NIH to study Brd4 during cardiac development!
January 2019: Great start —
Happy New Year! The lab is off to a really fast start. Welcome Wonho and Liam! Wonho is a postdoctoral fellow who is studying genome organization during fate specification. Liam is modeling human disease using iPS cells. In addition, the lab is incredibly excited to be part of a group of investigators from Penn, Johns Hopkins and University Hospitals awarded a prestigious grant from the American Heart Association and Allen Foundation. We'll be studying how neurovascular integrity is lost during aging and cognitive decline.
October 2018: WOW —
October is proving to be a big month for the lab — First, welcome Ashley. Ashley is a graduate student in the GE program and is rotating in the lab. However, she won't let us take her picture, yet. Second, we're happy to have helped Kiran Musunuru and Bill Peranteau on their study on in utero genome editing in Nature Medicine. Third, Raj and the lab are awarded an NIH New Innovator Award (part of the NIH Commonfund's High-Risk, High Reward program). The generous support will allow the lab to continue the deep dive into genome organization and cell fate. Read the Penn news release here. Congrats to the entire lab and all their hard work!
March 2018: Competent for commitment — 
Awesome Keystone meeting on gene regulation and chromatin architecture — and wonderful to hear great feedback about our work. Also, check out the review in G&D Raj co-authored in which the concept of "chromatin competence" is introduced.
Jan 2018: Good start to the New Year!
Raj was invited to give talks at the AHA Scientific Sessions & Keystone Meeting focused on heart failure — great to promote the lab and our work. In addition, the lab was awarded a grant from the Gilead Sciences Research Scholars Program; we're incredibly grateful for the support. Also, welcome to Josh Rhoades, our new bioinformatician, and Aaron Weiner who is rotating in the lab!
Oct 2017: BIG NEWS!
It's been in the works for quite a while, and took a lot of hard work from many— but our paper just came out online in Cell. Congrats to everyone involved, especially to Parisha, Andrey, Mudit, and Cheryl! Read the press release here and check out the video describing the work:
Sept 2017: Getting back to roots —
Paper published AND we got the cover! Haig's data demonstrate an interesting relationship between cardiac neural crest and transposition of the great arteries. Read it here.
Great work Haig!
June 2017: Welcome!
Sarshan Pather, a Penn MD/PhD student, is joining the lab for a rotation. Also, Ricardo was appointed to the CEMB training grant. Congrats Ricardo & welcome Sarshan — though what's up w/ the Gap bag?
March 2017: Busy!
Vimal Ramjee, a fellow alum of the Penn Cardiology fellowship, led studies to uncover the role of Yap/Taz in the epicardium which were published in the JCI. Really cool findings regarding the crosstalk between the heart and specific aspects of the immune system in the post-infarct state. Check out the work featured by Penn Medicine here.
Raj and his recent work was also featured in the Penn Medicine Blog as part of the recent Heart Month, see the piece here.
January 2017: Welcome Ricardo!
Ricardo had a great time during his rotation and is pursuing his thesis work in the lab, welcome Ricardo!
December 2016: Good News & Happy Holidays!
Raj is awarded a grant by the WW Smith Charitable Trust to facilitate efforts on Hdac3 during cardiac development. The lab also went out to lab staple, Han Dynasty, to celebrate the holidays.
August 2016: Summer goes quick...
Lunch at Han Dynasty as it was Nick's last day in the lab this summer...at least for now — he's headed off to start med school at Penn — so he won't be far!
July 2016: First sequencing run in lab —
let the adventures begin
July 2016: Amazing new paper spearheaded by Kyle Loh, Angela Chen, Lay Teng Ang, and Irv Weissman — Happy to have made a contribution towards this Herculean effort and be a part of a wonderful collaboration!
May 2016: Moving In
After years of training — Raj is named an Assistant Professor at Penn & the lab is established. The space is ready in Smilow TRC, and we're moving in (and Qiaohong has already set up her bench, not surprisingly). Nick Rizer and Parisha Shah join the lab; let the adventures begin!
