Steven Munger, Ph.D., named Assistant Professor

Munger earned a B.S. in biology at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, and his Ph.D. in genetics at Duke University Medical Center in Durham, N.C. During his predoctoral and postdoctoral years at Duke, in the laboratory of Blanche Capel, Ph.D., Munger focused on the complex orchestra of gene activities that together determine the sex of mice in early development.

Since joining the Churchill lab in 2011, Munger has incorporated computational biology and statistical genetics into his interests in gene regulation, mammalian development, and reproductive biology. His post-doctoral work with Dr. Churchill yielded new computational methods for analyzing and integrating large genomic datasets, and revealed a novel post-transcriptional mechanism that buffers protein abundance against genetic variation in the population. Munger has expanded on his earlier work to capture gene expression data from the gonad of a genetically varied mouse population during sex determination, and he plans to explore this dataset in his own lab.

"I feel very lucky to have been part of the vibrant JAX scientific community and greater MDI community for the past three years," Munger comments, "and I look forward to its bright future."

The Jackson Laboratory is an independent, nonprofit biomedical research institution and National Cancer Institute-designated Cancer Center based in Bar Harbor, Maine, with a facility in Sacramento, Calif., and a new genomic medicine institute in Farmington, Conn. It employs 1,700 staff, and its mission is to discover precise genomic solutions for disease and empower the global biomedical community in the shared quest to improve human health.