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Faculty Candidate Talk: Sheng Chih Jin, PhD
January 16, 2019 @ 12:00 pm - 1:30 pm
Speaker: Sheng Chih Jin, PhD
Talk Title: Genomics Approaches to Understand the Genetic Architecture of Congenital Heart Disease and Neurodevelopmental Disorders
About the Speaker: Sheng Chih Jin received a BS in applied mathematics from the National Chiao Tung University in Taiwan. After studying biostatistics at John Hopkins School of Medicine and receiving an ScM, he went on to complete a PhD in human and statistical genetics at Washington University in St. Louis. After completing a postdoctoral fellowship at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute at Yale University, Jin went on to his current role as an American Heart Association Postdoctoral Fellow at the Rockefeller University in New York.
Jin’s research applies integrative genomic analysis to better understand the complex genetic models driving congenital/neurological diseases in order to begin characterizing genetic networks of disease via multi-dimensional-omics data, biobank sources, and electronic health record data. He will use these results to interrogate the biological mechanisms disrupted by pathogenic mutations using model organisms or human induced pluripotent stem cells with the goal of translating these findings into effective therapeutic treatments.
About the Cluster Hire:
UW’s Cluster Hiring Initiative was launched in 1998 as an innovative partnership between the university, state and the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation (WARF). In its first phase, the initiative authorized nearly 50 “clusters” and nearly 150 new faculty through several rounds of hiring. In 2017, phase two of the Cluster Hiring Initiative was authorized with a goal of supporting at least 12 clusters.
A proposal by several Waisman Center investigators for a Functional Genetics/Genomics of Neurodevelopmental and Neurodegenerative Diseases cluster at the Waisman Center was selected by the UW-Madison Cluster Hire Initiative.
New faculty hires who are part of the Functional Genetics/Genomics of Neurodevelopmental and Neurodegenerative Diseases cluster at the Waisman Center will help develop a pipeline of discovery that begins with patients in the clinics and ends with new approaches for treatments or therapies. This cycle of translational research would start with identifying patient-specific genetic variants, and then continue through experimental studies to confirm whether these variants truly cause disease. Ultimately, new panels for diagnosis and new approaches for treatment may be discovered.
