10th Annual RNA Symposium: Title TBD
March 6-7, 2026 | Kahn Auditorium, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor Campus
Click to view the program (Coming Soon).
The Center for RNA Biomedicine at the University of Michigan proudly invites you to the 2026 RNA Symposium. Taking place from Friday, March 6 to Saturday, March 7, 2026, this premier event will convene thought leaders and pioneering researchers in the field of RNA science and biomedicine.
Thank you to our 2025 RNA Symposium Sponsors!
Interested in becoming a sponsor for 2026?
Contact paulave@umich.edu for more information.
Scheduled speakers:
Daniel S. Och University Professor
Director of the Epigenetics Program
University of Pennsylvania
Biography
Shelley Berger, Ph.D., is the Daniel S. Och University Professor at University of Pennsylvania (Penn) and is a faculty member in the Cell & Developmental Biology Department and the Genetics Department in the Perelman School of Medicine, as well as the Biology Department in the School of Arts and Sciences. Dr. Berger also serves as founding and current director of the Epigenetics Institute at Penn School of Medicine. Dr. Berger earned her Ph.D. from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor and was a post-doctoral fellow at Harvard and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She previously held the Hilary Koprowski Professorship at the Wistar Institute in Philadelphia. Dr. Berger has organized numerous international meetings on epigenetics and chromatin and served as Senior Editor at several journals, including Molecular and Cellular Biology. She is a member of advisory committees for foundations such as Stand Up to Cancer, research institutions such as Max Planck, and biotechnology companies such as Novartis and Chroma. She serves on review boards and panels for NIH Director’s Advisory Council, NIH/NIA Board of Scientific Counselors, Gladstone Institute at UCSF, IGBMC (Strasbourg), CPRIT (Texas), the European Research Council (Brussels), Cancer Research UK (London), and numerous individual extramural and intramural review panels at NIH. She has served on international committees to establish nomenclature for histone modifying enzymes and to help create the NIH-sponsored Human Epigenome Project. Dr. Berger received the Glenn Foundation Award in Aging, the Ellison Foundation Senior Scholar Award and the HHMI Collaborative Innovator Award. Dr. Berger is an elected member of the National Academy of Medicine (2012), the American Association for Advancement of Science (2012), the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (2013), the National Academy of Sciences (2018), and most recently the American Associated for Cancer Research (2021).
Dr. Berger has been a faculty member for twenty-five years, spending the last decade at the University of Pennsylvania. Her research focuses on chromatin biology and epigenetic regulation of the eukaryotic genome, focusing on post-translational modifications (PTMs) of histone proteins, and she teaches and mentors in these subjects for undergraduates and graduate students in the Biology Department and in the School of Medicine at Penn. Dr. Berger has mentored 12 graduate students and 20 post-doctoral fellows who are successful in careers encompassing academia, the pharmaceutical industry, and scientific writing and teaching careers. An additional 20 trainees are currently in the lab, including a mix of undergraduates, graduate students, postdoctoral, and medical fellows. Dr. Berger received the Penn Biomedical Postdoctoral Programs Distinguished Mentor Award in 2016, and the Stanley N. Cohen Award in 2016, the highest recognition for basic biomedical research at the Penn School of Medicine.
Over its history, research in Dr. Berger’s lab has uncovered numerous chromatin enzymes and has addressed fundamental questions on their mechanisms in modifying both histones and DNA binding activators (i.e., the tumor suppressor p53) in transcription. These findings have contributed to the explosion in broad interest and focus on epigenetics in biomedical research. Indeed, in recent years her lab’s effort has become increasingly focused on the study of mammalian biology and human diseases, including epigenetics in cancer and other diseases associated with aging, as well as epigenetic control of learning, memory, and behavior in mammals and the ant model system. To fund this broad research portfolio, Dr. Berger currently has three NIH individual R01 grants and she is PI of an NIH P01 grant. In 2017, Dr. Berger established Epivario Inc. to develop epigenetic treatments for neurological memory disorders. Dr. Berger’s lab has published more than 200 papers and reviews, with many in high impact journals such as Nature, Science, Cell, and Genes & Development. Her work on epigenetics of behavior in ants has been covered in The New York Times and The New Yorker magazine.
Title TBD
Abstract: TBD
R. Selden Rose Professor of Molecular Biophysics and Biochemistry and Professor of Cell Biology
Director, Yale Center for RNA Science and Medicine
Biography
Karla Neugebauer holds a BS in Biology from Cornell University and a PhD in Neuroscience from UCSF. She switched gears to RNA biology as a postdoc with Mark Roth at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center. There she participated in the initial description of the SR protein family of splicing regulators and was inspired to study RNA metabolism in vivo by combining imaging, genomics, and sequencing strategies. From 2001-2013 she was a Research Group Leader at the Max Planck Institute of Cell biology and Genetics in Dresden Germany. In 2013, she moved to Yale as a Professor of Molecular Biophysics and Biochemistry and of Cell Biology. She has been the Director of the Yale Center for RNA Science and Biomedicine since 2018 and was recognized internationally for her work in RNA Biology by the RNA Society (2017 mid-career award). She has studied splicing in relation to nuclear speckles and discovered that most introns are removed during the process, or co-transcriptionally. Her lab has shown that snRNP assembly occurs in membraneless organelles called Cajal bodies (CBs) and that depletion of the CB scaffolding protein coilin is lethal in zebrafish embryos, due to a deficit in splicing. She is passionate about climate change, believing that everyone has something to contribute to meet its challenges. She is currently developing biochemistry curriculum to show the relevance of the discipline to meeting the current and future needs of our planet.
“Title TBD”
Abstract: TBD
Professor and Vice Chair, RNA Therapeutics Institute, Pillar Chair in Biomedical Research
UMass Chan Medical School
Biography
Erik J. Sontheimer, Ph.D., is the Pillar Chair in Biomedical Research and Professor at the University of Massachusetts Chan Medical School, where he is also Vice Chair of the RNA Therapeutics Institute. He earned his Ph.D. from Yale in 1992, where he studied pre-mRNA splicing mechanisms in Joan Steitz’ laboratory. Following postdoctoral work with Joe Piccirilli at the University of Chicago, Sontheimer joined the faculty at Northwestern in 1999. He continued his work on the roles of RNA molecules in gene expression, including RNA interference mechanisms as well as the study of CRISPR immune systems in pathogenic bacteria. Among other advances, in 2008 his group reported that CRISPR systems target DNA molecules directly, and they became the first to recognize and articulate CRISPR’s potential for RNA-guided genome engineering. He has been honored with a CAREER Award from the National Science Foundation, a New Investigator Award in the Basic Pharmacological Sciences from the Burroughs Wellcome Fund, a Basil O’Conner Award from the March of Dimes, a Scholar Award from the American Cancer Society, a Distinguished Teaching Award from the Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences at Northwestern, the Nestlé Award from the American Society for Microbiology, the Mid-Career Award from the RNA Society, and election to the American Academy of Microbiology. He recently completed a term as Co-chair of the Steering Committee for the NIH Somatic Cell Genome Editing Consortium, and he currently serves as Co-chair of the Board of Scientific Counselors at the National Cancer Institute and as a member of the Scientific Advisory Board at Tessera Therapeutics. In 2014 he co-founded Intellia Therapeutics, Inc. for the development of clinical applications of CRISPR gene editing. That same year he also moved to UMass Chan Medical School, where he is continuing his research on the uses of RNA molecules in biomedical research and the treatment of human disease.
Join us for a series of dynamic presentations, panel discussions, and collaborative sessions designed to push the boundaries of RNA research and foster interdisciplinary collaboration.
Dates: March 6 – 7, 2026
Location: University of Michigan, Ann Arbor Campus