Prof. Sid Dey Wins NSF Career Award

The National Science Foundation's Faculty Early Career Development award is given to early-career faculty who exemplify academic excellence in their research and who provide leadership to advance the mission of their departments. NSF recognizes individuals who embody those values and who show a dedication to education and research. Prof. Sid Dey, who holds joint appointments in the departments of Bioengineering and Chemical Engineering, was recently named as one of the 2024 awardees of the prestigious NSF Career award.

Professor Dey's project examines "how signaling cues arising from the spatial location of a cell within a tissue and its epigenetic state regulate gene expression during early human development. The function of a cell is tightly controlled by the cells location within a tissue and its intrinsic epigenetic landscape. While single-cell sequencing has revolutionized our understanding of mammalian systems by measuring the transcriptome and epigenome landscape within single cells, spatial information is lost using current methods. To better understand how spatial organization regulates gene expression in individual cells, the PI proposes to use photo-sensitive oligonucleotides to optically stamp the spatial positions of cells during development. This spatial information will be combined with single-cell mRNA sequencing and single-cell epigenetic features. Collectively, these techniques will map how spatial and epigenetic determinants control the specification of human primordial germ cells during early development."

As part of this project, Prof. Dey will integrate the data generated by the research into programs that include: a computational genomics bootcamp for high school students, a summer wet lab internship for undergraduates, and a mobile app game that introduces gene regulation concepts and targets high school students.