Neurogeneticist Elissa Chesler joins The Jackson Laboratory faculty
| Date: October 1, 2009 |
Bar Harbor, Maine -- Neurogeneticist Elissa Chesler, Ph.D., has joined The Jackson Laboratory's faculty from the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee. As a Jackson assistant professor, Chesler plans to expand her research in behavioral neuroscience, bioinformatics and integrative systems genetics.
Specifically, Chesler's work focuses on analyzing in mice the genetic regulation that underlies stress, pain and addiction and relating her data to human behavioral disorders.
“The goal is development of risk-prediction strategies and targeted treatment strategies,” she says. “I work to devise ways of ensuring that mouse models are relevant to the human clinical state. We need to achieve greater precision in identifying how behavior is shaped by genetics, environment and life history.”
Dr. Chesler earned her doctorate in neuroscience at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and received additional postdoctoral training at the University of Tennessee Health Science Center. At the Oak Ridge National Laboratory she bred and characterized several hundred lines of the mouse Collaborative Cross, a powerful new mouse resource for integrative genetics designed by members of the Complex Trait Consortium, including Jackson scientists. While at Oak Ridge she held an adjunct faculty position with The Jackson Laboratory from 2006 until joining in 2009. She also served as an adjunct assistant professor in the Genome Science and Technology Program at the University of Tennessee.
Among her outside interests is astronomy. “One of the advantages of living in Downeast Maine is the darkness of the night sky,” she says. “There is very little light pollution here, which is not the case in the vast majority of the eastern United States. Right after moving here I became involved with the Night Sky Festival at Acadia National Park. I had the opportunity to share the night sky with several hundred park visitors through my 10-inch reflector telescope.”
The Jackson Laboratory is an independent, nonprofit biomedical research institution based in Bar Harbor, Maine, with a facility in Sacramento, Calif. Its mission is to discover the genetic basis for preventing, treating and curing human diseases, and to enable research and education for the global biomedical community.
# # #
Contact(s): Joyce Peterson, 207-288-6058
For information on automatic email delivery of news releases (journalists only), please send an email request for details to news@jax.org. Please address other inquiries to pubinfo@jax.org.
Media Relations, Communications Office
The Jackson Laboratory
600 Main Street
Bar Harbor, Maine 04609-1500
Phone: 207-288-6058 (journalists only)
Main Jackson Laboratory phone: 207-288-6000
Fax: 207-288-6076
Email: news@jax.org
