New Appointments in Genomics at CUIMC
Bing Ren, PhD, a pioneer in the field of genomics and epigenetics, joined Columbia in April as professor in the departments of Genetics and Development, Biochemistry and Molecular Biophysics, and Systems Biology, and as the associate director of the Roy and Diana Vagelos Institute for Basic Biomedical Science, within the Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons. Dr. Ren also serves as scientific director and chief executive officer of the New York Genome Center, of which Columbia is a founding institution. Dr. Ren’s multidisciplinary and multi-institutional appointment marks an exciting and collaborative moment for genomic and epigenetic research at Columbia. Dr. Ren joins Columbia from the University of California, San Diego (UCSD), where he was a professor of cellular and molecular medicine and founding director of the Center for Epigenomics at the UCSD School of Medicine. Renowned for his research in genomics and epigenetics, Dr. Ren focuses on the regulatory processes that control gene expression and has developed innovative tools for systematic analysis of gene regulatory processes. His work has advanced our understanding of how genetic variants are interpreted and how gene activities are regulated throughout development and disease pathogenesis. His inventions and discoveries have transformed a variety of fields, from precision medicine to cancer and neurological disease research.
Jennifer Posey, MD, PhD, joined Columbia in February to serve as chief of the Division of Clinical Genetics in the Department of Pediatrics and as the inaugural chief genomics officer of Columbia University Irving Medical Center.
As chief genomics officer at CUIMC, Dr. Posey will develop a new vision for medical genetics and genomics and coordinate these services with Columbia’s Precision Medicine Initiative, the electronic health record infrastructure, and the clinical genomics laboratories and Genomic Data Infrastructure at NewYork-Presbyterian/CUIMC.
Dr. Posey joins Columbia from Baylor College of Medicine in the Department of Molecular and Human Genetics. She has served as faculty and an attending physician since 2014 following her completion of fellowships in medical genetics and research genetics at Baylor, and residency in medicine at Columbia. She is currently a principal investigator of the NIH Mendelian Genomics Research Center U01 and GREGoR (Genomics Research to Elucidate the Genetics of Rare Diseases) Consortium.