Ting Wu

NH
Ting Wu

Professor of genetics, Harvard Medical School; director, Personal Genetics Education Project

Ting (C.-ting) Wu's laboratory investigates how the organization of chromosomes within the nucleus can influence gene expression in various organisms. Her particular focus in this area is the behavior of homologous chromosomes — how they sense each other, find each other, and then, in certain circumstances, physically pair, influencing gene activity and possibly even genome evolution. Her laboratory also develops new technologies, ranging from protocols for engineering genomes to strategies for visualizing chromosomes with nucleic acid probes. Wu also works to increase public awareness of the benefits and ethical implications of learning the details of one’s genome. She founded the Personal Genome Education Project, which is dedicated to making that awareness equally accessible regardless of socioeconomic, cultural, ethnic, and religious influences. The project engages the public through high schools and online curricula, teacher conferences, museums of science, mobile tools, the entertainment industry, and Congressional briefings. Wu completed her genetics PhD at Harvard, did research at Stanford and Yale and returned to Boston as a fellow at Massachusetts General Hospital before joining the Harvard faculty. She was honored in 2012 with the NIH Director’s Pioneer Award for her work on chromosome organization and inheritance.

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