I am the Maragaret M. Dyson Professor of Pediatric Oncology at Harvard Medical School, where I am also a Professor of cell biology. My laboratory uses a combination of genetics, biochemistry and live-cell imaging to study cell division and the maintenance of genome stability. Our projects are aimed at defining the molecular mechanisms underlying polarized morphogenesis and understanding how changes in chromosome number (ploidy) affect genome stability. Our work on cytoskeletal dynamics is focused on the mechanism of chromosome segregation in normal cells and cancer cells. We are particularly interested in how the microtubule and actin cytoskeletons interact, and have recently uncovered a mechanism by which actin organization and the adhesive microenvironment of cells influence chromosome segregation. We are also interested in how aneuploidy (abnormal chomosome number) and polyploidy (increased sets of chromosomes) impact on tumor biology.

I received my MD from the University of Chicago, Pritzker School of Medicine and a Ph.D. under the supervision of Hidesaburo Hanafusa, at Rockefeller University. I completed my fellowship in hematology and oncology at the Children’s Hospital, in Boston and did postdoctoral research at The Whitehead Institute of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the laboratory of Gerald Fink. I have received many awards and honors, including the MERIT Award of the National Institutes of General Medical Sciences. I am a member of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.