Position Professor of Biochemistry and Molecular Pharmacology, NYU Grossman School of Medicine Email [email protected] Website yanailab.org Bio/Description Itai Yanai is a Professor at the NYU Grossman School of Medicine, where his team studies dynamic biological processes through the lens of gene regulation and systems biology. His work has led to many contributions in the fields studying the evolution of developmental gene expression programs, spatial and single-cell transcriptomics, cancer cell states & tumor heterogeneity, and genome evolution and the genetic basis of genotype-environment interactions. Along with Dr. Martin Lercher, Dr. Yanai co-authored the popular science book The Society of Genes, which discusses how genes compete and cooperate in our genome. Also in collaboration with Dr. Lercher, Dr. Yanai discusses the exciting and significant parts of scientific research that occur behind the scenes, called “night science” and explores the creative side of scientific thinking in a collection of editorials in Genome Biology and associated podcasts. Dr. Yanai earned PhD in Bioinformatics from Boston University and pursued postdoctoral training at Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel and Harvard University. He served as Assistant and Associate Professor of Biology at Technion -Israel Institute of Technology between 2008-2016. In 2016, he joined NYU Langone Health. "We typically present the results of our research, without describing our crucial creative process that led to them. Indeed, while from the outside research may seem as a logical, step-wise process, in this session I want to describe how the generation of a new question is the result of an unpredictable and wandering process, which paves our way towards a discovery, effectively changing our perception of reality. I'm very much looking forward to this session with GradFUTURES!" Related News Graduate students and postdocs exercise creative thinking in Night Science workshops during Wintersession Upcoming Professional Development Events Dec 5 Managing Active Research Data Dec 7 Writing to Influence: How Academia Inspires Action with Christopher Paul Harris Dec 7 LaTeX Drop-in Consultations Dec 7 Cynthia Dwork: It’s in Your Phone. It’s in Your Browser. It’s in Your Redistricting Data! … It’s Differential Privacy. Dec 8 30 Minutes Towards Better Bibliographies and Footnotes! (online) Dec 8 Introduction to Environmental Studies Library Research: Water Use and Availability Dec 11 Office Hours for Humanities and Social Sciences Graduate Students (In Person) Dec 11 Office Hours with Leonard Cassuto Dec 11 American Higher Ed Learning Cohort Session 6: International Perspectives (Europe, Asia) Dec 13 Shake It Off: Taylor Swift Friendship Bracelet Making Party (Drop in!) Dec 13 Entrepreneurship, Venture Capital, and Startups Learning Cohort: Capstone Presentations Dec 14 Writing to Influence: Academia and Social Advancement as Modeled by HBCUs with Jelani Favors