Elizabeth Heller, PhD

The Heller Lab research program is focused on elucidating the causal mechanisms by which epigenetic reprogramming contributes to neuropsychiatric and neurodevelopmental disease. The Heller lab applies targeted epigenetic editing to determine the direct causal relevance of histone modifications to transcription, alternative splicing, and behavior. This approach will be applied to SynGAP1, to define gene regulatory mechanisms and contribute to novel therapeutic approaches. Dr. Heller is an Associate Professor of Pharmacology at the University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine. She received her PhD from The Rockefeller University and completed her postdoctoral fellowship at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. Dr. Heller is the recipient of a 2017 NIH Director’s Pioneer Award, a 2020 SynGAP Research Fund Grant, and a 2023 Orphan Disease Center Million Dollar Bike Ride Award from the Syngap Research Fund.