Gianluca Ursini MD, PhD

Gianluca Ursini, M.D., Ph.D., is an Investigator in Functional Genomics at the Lieber Institute for Brain Development. His main interest is the dynamic interaction between genes and epigenetic factors during brain development and activity. He is currently investigating how early events such as obstetrical complications modulate the relationship of schizophrenia with genomic risk, through processes potentially related to placental functioning. Dr. Ursini is also interested in the complexity of the noncoding RNA landscape, and in this regard he is studying divergent noncoding transcription, which provides a potential compelling mechanism for the fine-tuning regulation of protein-coding genes expression. Both projects highlight how genes critical for brain development and disorders exert their effects differently depending on the context where they act, i.e. environmental factors (e.g. early life events) and epigenetic mechanisms of regulation (e.g. divergent RNAs).
Dr. Ursini attended the University of Bari ‘A. Moro’, where he received a M.D. in 2002, a residency in Psychiatry in 2006 and a Ph.D. in ‘Experimental Neurobiology’ in 2011. Over the course of his residency and his Ph.D., he has been performing studies on schizophrenia using a combination of imaging and genetics techniques, triggering the investigation of the relationship between epigenetic factors, genetic variants and brain phenotypes. He joined the Lieber Institute in the spring of 2012, as a visiting scientist first and then as post-doctoral fellow.