- Fellowship in 2007 at Harvard University
Dr. Manching Ku obtained her Bachelor of Science (Summa Cum Laude) in Biochemistry from the University of Massachusetts. She completed her Ph.D in Biochemistry at Tufts University under the guidance of Dr. Akiko Hata, studying transcriptional regulations in TGF-beta/BMP pathways. She received her postdoctoral training at the Harvard Medical School and the Broad Institute of Harvard and MIT in the laboratory of Dr. Bradley Bernstein. During her time at the Broad Institute, in addition to spear-heading one of the first epigenomic studies that defined chromatin states in pluripotent and iPS cells, she also established the experimental pipelines for the Encyclopedia of DNA Elements (ENCODE) and Reference Epigenome Mapping Center (REMC) consortia. After establishing and directing the Next-generation Sequencing Core at the Salk Institute, she is currently a group leader at the University of Freiburg.
Currently
Dr. Ku is interested in understanding chromatin dynamics during cell state transition in the context of regenerative medicine. Using Chromatin-immunoprecipitation coupled with next-generation sequencing (ChIP-Seq), gene expression, proteomics, loss of function and gain of function techniques, enable the interrogation of various biological systems including embryonic stem cells, induced pluripotent stem cells (iPS), solid tumors, tissues and cancer cells.