Andreas Pfenning
Associate Professor, Ray and Stephanie Lane Computational Biology Department
Address:
Ray and Stephanie Lane Computational Biology Department, SCS5000 Forbes Avenue
Pittsburgh, PA 15213
Gates Hillman Center Room 7711
Administrative Assistant: Erin Driskill
Over the last several decades, the genetic revolution has showed us that much of human biology, even complex behavior, is encoded in our genome. Most of the variation in genome sequence that influences neurological disease predisposition and behavioral ability occurs in the vast regulatory regions between genes. The goal of the Pfenning laboratory is to build a set of computational and experimental genomic tools to study how sequence differences in those regions influence neurons, neural circuits, disease predisposition, and behavior. By understanding the genetic mechanisms underlying neural function, we seek to uncover the cell type-specific basis of Alzheimer’s disease and addiction, as well as gain insights into how speech production ability evolved in the human lineage.
Lab Members

Ghada Abdelhady
Ph.D. Student

Ashley Brown
Project Scientist/Engineer

Ziheng (Calvin) Chen
Ph.D. Student

Vijay Cherupally
Research Associate

Lahari Gadey
Research Associate

Rajee Ganesan
Ph.D. Student

Mike Leone
MSTP Student

Emmett Myers
Undergraduate Researcher

Heather Harper Sestili
Research Programmer

Chai Srinivasan
Ph.D. Student

Amy Stephen
Undergraduate Student

Robert Van De Weerd
Project Scientist

Andrew Wang
Undergraduate Researcher