News

2025

January

Our collaborative work with the Rhoades Lab is published in Structure and now available online.

Giulia Varignani joins our lab as an exchange graduate student from the University of Bologna, Italy.

2024

December

Sophie gave a talk in our departmental retreat.

October

Sophie got awarded the 2024 S. Walter Englander Prize for Postdoctoral Research from the Department of Biochemistry & Biophysics.

September

Kenji gave a talk at the ASBMB meeting 2024 'Transcriptional regulation by chromatin and RNA polymerase' in Alexandria, VA.

Our collaborative work with the Tsai Lab is published in Molecular Cell and now available online.

Sophie's paper is published in Nucleic Acids Research.

July

Kenji has been promoted to Associate Professor with Tenure.

June

Hee Jong leaves the lab for UCLA for his post-doc study.

Hee Jong's paper is published in Molecular Cell and now available online.

May

Linh passed her prelim.

January

Leon's review is published in Current Opinion in Structural Biology.


2023

December

Hee Jong has successfully defended his PhD thesis.

August

Kenji gave a talk at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory meeting Mechanisms of Eukaryotic Transcription 2023.

June

Linh has officially become a lab member.

May

Hee Jong and Leon gave talk at Structural Biology Symposium at Penn.

March

Leon has been awarded an NIH F31, an Individual Predoctoral Fellowship from the NIGMS.

February

Jose and Leon's paper is published in Molecular Cell.

Graduate student Briana Cruga joins the lab for the winter rotation.

January

Graduate student Elie Mer joins the lab for the winter rotation.


2022

October

Jose has defended his PhD thesis.

Our collaboration paper has been published in Biochemistry.

September

Leon presented a poster at ASBMB transcription-chromatin meeting 'Transcriptional regulation: Chromatin and RNA polymerase II' held in Snowbird, Utah.

August

Andy has officially become a lab member.

Graduate student Linh Pham joins the lab for the fall rotation.

Our collaboration paper with the Lieberman lab (Wistar Institute) is published.

April

Graduate student Andy Nguyen joins us for the summer rotation.

March

Samah has been awarded a Penn Undergraduate Research Mentoring Program Fellowship.

Kenji received funding from University Research Foundation. 

Undergraduate student William Zhang joined our lab.

February

Our paper has been published in Molecular Cell. Kenji's interview has also been posted.

Kenji received a co-PI grant from the National Science Foundation with Jung Hyun Min at Baylor University.


2021

December

Leon won the 2nd place poster prize in Biophysics at 2021 Department of Biochemistry and Biophysics/BMB graduate group retreat.

July

Rina has defended her PhD thesis and starts her post-doc study.

June

Undergraduate student Samah Sharmin joined the lab.

Trevor's paper is published in Nature Communications.

Our collaboration paper with the Christianson lab (UPenn) is published in Nature Communications.

May

Leon passed his prelim.

Chun and Rina's paper came out in bioRxiv.

Trevor has defended his PhD thesis and leaving for Rockefeller University for his post-doc study.

April

Trevor's paper is published in Science Advances.

March 

Graduate student Athena Zhang joined us for the spring rotation.

February

Our collaboration paper with the Daldal lab (UPenn) is published in Nature Communications.

Undergraduate student Kenneth Newman joined our lab.

January

Our collaboration paper with the Tsai lab (UT Houston) is published in Science Advances.


2020

August

Hee Jong has been awarded an NIH F31, an Individual Predoctoral Fellowship from the NIA.

July

Leon has officially become our lab member as a joint student with the Chang lab.

June

Our collaboration paper with the Dominguez lab (UPenn) is published in Science Advances.

January

Graduate student Leon Palao III joined us for the winter rotation.


2019

December

Rina won the best poster award at 2019 Department of Biochemistry and Biophysics/BMB graduate group retreat.

October

Rina's paper was published and highlighted in PNAS.

September

Postdoc Chun Yang joins our lab.

August

Kenji and Rina presented at the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Meeting on Mechanisms of Eukaryotic Transcription.

July

Graduate student Trevor Van Eeuwen presented a poster at the CBI Symposium.

Our collaboration paper with the Black lab (UPenn) is published in Current Biology.

Research Specialist Laura Snyder leaves our lab and will be moving on to graduate school at University of Michigan.

June

Hee Jong receives the United States-Israel Binational Science Foundation (BSF) travel grant.

April

Graduate student Jose Gorbea is awarded the National Science Foundation (NSF) graduate research fellowship.

Graduate student Hee Jong Kim is awarded NIH Chemistry-Biology Interface (CBI) graduate training fellowship.

Graduate student Rina Fujiwara's paper is published in Methods. 


2018

October

Kenji gave a talk at the ASBMB Symposium on Transcriptional Regulation by Chromatin and RNA Polymerase II in Snowbird, Utah.


2017

December

Nivedita's paper is published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

August 

Research Specialist Nivedita Damodaren has left and moved on to graduate school at UCLA.


2015

January

The Murakami lab officially begins at the University of Pennsylvania.