"Phagocytosis-driven neurodegeneration and new CRISPR tools in Drosophila".

September 14, 2022 @ 04:00 pm to 05:00 pm

Dr. Chun Han, Cornell University

108 Wartik Laboratory
University Park

Bio:

Chun Han (b.1977) received a BS degree in Cell Biology and Genetics from Peking University, China in 1999. In the same year, he started his Ph.D. research career at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center and University of Cincinnati in Dr. Xinhua Lin’s lab, where he studied morphogen gradient formation and developed a love for Drosophila and microscopy. Fascinated by the complex and beautiful dendritic structures of Drosophila da neurons, he then joined the lab of Dr. Yuh Nung Jan as a Jane Coffin Childs Postdoctoral Fellow at University of California, San Francisco in 2006 to study the cell biology of these neurons. There he developed a system to study interactions between da neurons and surrounding tissues. He became an Assistant Professor in the Department of Molecular Biology and Genetics and the Weill Institute for Cell and Molecular biology at Cornell University in November 2013 and was promoted to Associate Professor in 2020. Using da neurons and other neuronal systems in Drosophila, his lab studies how neurons develop diverse dendrite morphologies by receiving signals from their microenvironment and how neurons interact with phagocytes during neurodegeneration. His lab also has a keen interest in developing new techniques, such as CRISPR/Cas9 and optogenetics, for more sophisticated manipulation of gene functions in Drosophila. He teaches Cell Biology (BIOMG4320), Fluorescence Microscopy (BIOMG8310), and Neurodevelopment (BIOMG8370).

Contact

Melissa Rolls
melissarolls@gmail.com