Our proposal “Decoding Genomic Imprinting for Therapeutic Innovation,” developed together with lab member Dina Aljogol, has been selected for funding by the Milton Fund from Harvard University. We are grateful to the Harvard community for supporting this work.

Congratulations to two Whipple lab trainees, Courtney and Jen, for winning “the most beautiful experiment of the year” in the Harvard MCB Department! We also thank Min for her contributions to the original idea for the experiment; it was a truly collaborative effort. Courtney gave a talk at the departmental retreat highlighting this work.

Our latest study introduces a powerful chimeric eCLIP approach to map snoRNA-target RNA interactions across human and mouse cells. By analyzing binding partners of both core and accessory snoRNA-binding proteins, we uncover dozens of novel snoRNA interactions — shedding new light on their roles in RNA processing and modification. Read the full paper here.

“The Department of Molecular and Cellular Biology (MCB) at Harvard has announced the recipients of the 2025 MCB Mentorship Awards, honoring four individuals whose dedication to guiding and supporting others has had a profound impact on the department. This year’s awardees—Colin Kim, Amanda Whipple, Isobel Wouk Green, and Claire Ang—were nominated by mentees who praised not only their scientific insight, but also their compassion, encouragement, and tireless investment in others’ growth.”

The Whipple Lab is excited to have Fahmida Afreen join as an undergraduate researcher. Fahmida is a freshman at Harvard College intending to double concentrate in Applied Math and Molecular and Cellular Biology.

Dina is a postdoctoral fellow interested in the molecular mechanisms of imprinted gene regulation. Before joining Harvard, she completed her PhD at Hamad Bin Khalifa University, where she studied chromatin organization and long-range promoter contacts in autism spectrum disorders.

The Whipple Lab welcomes MCO graduate student Isra Galicia Silva to the lab. She received her B.S. in Biochemistry and Microbiology from the Universidad del Valle de Guatemala and completed a Post-Baccalaureate at the University of Pennsylvania, where she worked with the J-Rad Lab on the interplay between metabolism, circadian rhythms, and cellular maturation.

Congratulations to Min Bae on receiving a postdoctoral fellowship award to further study how the Mest-Copg2 ICR achieves long-range regulation.

The Whipple Lab welcomes our newest member, Katherine Gu. Katherine joins us as a research assistant. She received her B.A. in Biochemistry and Chemical Biology from Vanderbilt University. Outside of lab, she enjoys working out, hiking, and trying restaurants in the Boston area.

Congratulations to Carlie McGrath Tydings who will be joining the Greenleaf Lab at the Stanford Department of Genetics in July, as a research assistant.

Congratulations to Aditya for graduating from Harvard! He will be attending graduate school at MIT in the fall.

Lily will be part of Harvard’s Program for Research Science and Engineering (PRISE) this summer. Her project with the Whipple lab will involve observing hallmarks of nucleolar stress and the role of small nucleoar RNAs on neuronal function.

Congratulations to Research Assistant Jen Yi! This fall, Jen will begin graduate school in the Harvard MCO program.

Debaleena Kar has joined the Whipple lab as a Postdoctoral Fellow. Her research focuses on the role of snoRNA in translation.

Daniel successfully defended his PhD thesis work on "Investigating the cis-regulatory mechanisms underlying neuronal imprinted expression." We thank Daniel for all his contributions to the lab and wish him the best of luck in his next career steps at Intellia Therapeutics!

This grant aims to investigate the role of SNORD116 in ribosome biology. For more details on this project and others funded by FPWR, a blog with the funded descriptions and a link to the recorded webinar presented by Dr. Theresa Strong, Director of Research Programs at FPWR can be found here.

A new study led by Daniel Loftus of the Whipple Lab has found that differences in maternal and paternal genomes in embryonic stem cells shape gene expression in neurons. The study, which appears in the latest issue of the journal Genes & Development, delves into the 3D structure of a genome region called Peg13-Kcnk9.

The Whipple lab enjoyed the MCB fall kick off celebration to welcome new students on campus. Graduate students interested in rotating should contact Amanda Whipple.

Congratulations to Courtney Whilden for being awarded an NIH F31 fellowship! This award will support her project on snoRNAs.

Carlie has been awarded HCRP (Harvard College Research Program) funding to pursue her work on the subnuclear localization of imprinted genes in the lab this summer.

Udbhav Chitta was the first member of the Whipple lab in 2019 and has been accepted into the biomedical graduate program at UMass Medical School. We are grateful to his contributions to the lab and are excited he will remain nearby. Warm wishes!

While he will be sorely missed in the Whipple lab this summer, we are proud of Aditya for seizing this opportunity to widen his skill sets. Look out for his graduate school applications this fall!

The HCRP will fund Carlie's independent research in the Whipple lab to investigate subnuclear localization of imprinted loci.

Aditya Wirawan presented his research at the National Collegiate Research Conference. Watch out for his graduate school applications this fall!

Join us in welcoming Amanda Leinbaugh to the team! Amanda will provide administrative support for Dr. Whipple and the lab.

We bid a warm farewell to Daniel Blackwell as he follows his dreams in LA. We thank Daniel for helping us with the administrative side of getting our lab up and running since 2019.

This award will support the work of graduate student Courtney Whilden on "Investigating Satiety Circuitry Changes in Prader-Willi Syndrome." Experiments are already underway!

MCB faculty Amanda Whipple has received an R35 Maximizing Investigators’ Research Award (MIRA) from the NIH. The award provides five years of funding to promising early career PIs, with the goal of ensuring recipients’ stability and flexibility as their labs branch out in pursuit of new research questions…

Congratulations to Aditya on his successful presentation at the Harvard Undergraduate Research Opportunities in Science fair today.

We are welcoming a new undergraduate in the lab, Carlie McGrath, a junior concentrating in Integrative Biology. Carlie will be working under the mentorship of Min on gene regulatory mechanisms controlling imprinted gene expression.