Jessica Connelly

Jess completed a Bachelor of Science in Chemistry with an emphasis in Biochemistry at Richard Stockton College in 1997. As a graduate student, she had the unique experience of training with two professors, both well–established in the field of epigenetics. In 1997, she began her training in Dr. John Lucchesi’s lab, where she studied the epigenetic aspects of dosage compensation in Drosophila melanogaster. She moved to Stony Brook University in the summer of 1999 and completed her PhD in 2004 under the mentorship of a yeast epigeneticist, Dr. Rolf Sternglanz. Jess’s PhD thesis pursued her interest in the histone code by characterizing a domain (BAH domain) that resides within proteins involved in regulating transcription through chromatin compaction. Jess was a postdoc at the Duke Center for Human Genetics from 2004-2008. Her postdoctoral work allowed her to explore the fields of human genetics and genomics. She trained under Dr. Elizabeth Hauser, a human statistical geneticist, and Dr. Simon G. Gregory, a human genomicist. It was while working under the direction of Dr. Gregory that she began projects that focus on the methylation state of the oxytocin receptor.