AREAS OF SPECIALTY:

• Chromatin biology

• Nuclear architecture

• Senescence

Shelley Berger, PhD

Shelley Berger is the Daniel S. Och University Professor at the University of Pennsylvania and the Director of the Epigenetics Institute at the Perelman School of Medicine.  Dr. Berger earned her PhD from the University of Michigan and was a postdoctoral fellow at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She previously held the Hilary Koprowski Professorship at the Wistar Institute in Philadelphia. Nationally she received the Ellison Foundation Senior Scholar Award in Aging, the Glenn Foundation Award in Aging, and the HHMI Collaborative Research Award.  Dr. Berger is an elected fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the National Academy of Medicine, the American Association of Cancer Research, and the National Academy of Sciences. She has been awarded the Outstanding Investigator Award (R35) from the NIH National Cancer Institute. Dr. Berger’s body of work over twenty-five years helped to launch the “modern era” of chromatin biology and epigenetics. Her early discoveries provided a framework and paradigm for mechanisms of histone and factor-modifying enzymes in gene regulation. Dr. Berger’s research over the last decade uncovered a vital role of epigenetic regulation in mammalian and human health, behavior, and disease, including pioneering discoveries of physiological functions of histone modifications in aging and senescence, cancer, T cell exhaustion, mammalian learning, and memory, as well as revealing a decisive role underlying organismal level behavior and aging in ant societies.