Dr. Hyejung Won (Assistant Professor, Genetics) received a UNC Junior Faculty Development Award from the Office of the Provost.
Dr. Won’s project, titled “Gene regulatory impact of genetic risk factors of pleiotropic effects” is focused on employing massively parallel reporter assays to quantify changes in regulatory activity induced by pleiotropic variants in human neural progenitors that model human neurogenesis. The proposed study will help develop a powerful framework to refine biological hypotheses for pleiotropy by identifying causal variants, regulatory mechanisms and target genes, which can be further elaborated to give rise to novel therapeutic approaches.