Bio:

Grace Chen is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Immunobiology at Yale University. She received her Ph.D. in Chemical Biology from Harvard University, where she identified novel RNA modifications using analytical chemistry and chemical biology approaches in the laboratory of Dr. David Liu. After graduating, she joined the laboratory of Dr. Howard Chang at Stanford University for her postdoctoral fellowship. During her postdoctoral training, she developed tools to study circular RNAs and elucidated how cells differentiate between self and non-self circular RNAs. Her work demonstrated how RNA modifications regulate the proteins that interact with circular RNAs and either promote or prevent immune stimulation. Now at Yale University, Dr. Chen continues to explore the functions and regulations of RNAs in health and disease. A major focus of the Chen lab is to understand how different features of RNAs affect their activity, translation, stability, and the induction or evasion of immune activation, with the goal of developing therapies to treat autoimmune diseases and cancer based on targeting specific aspects of RNA. She is the recipient of the Rita Allen Foundation Scholars Award and the NIH R35 grant.