Ramin Shiekhattar PhD

Dr. Ramin Shiekhattar recently joined the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine as Professor in the Departments of Human Genetics and Biochemistry & Molecular Biology. He is also the Director of the Cancer Epigenetics Research Program, Chief of the Division of Cancer Genomics and Epigenetics as well as the academic Director of the Oncogenomic Core Facility. Dr. Shiekhattar obtained his Ph.D. degree from the University of Kansas and completed his postdoctoral training at UMDNJ.

Dr. Shiekhattar’s laboratory has made a number of important contributions over the past years in identifying and characterizing important mediators of epigenetic regulation and noncoding RNA processing that contribute to cancer development. Importantly, laboratories’ recent work has begun to explore a class of long noncoding RNAs (lncRNAs) that behave similar to transcriptional enhancers. The laboratory is interested in deciphering the function of this class of lncRNAs in the context of relevant models of development and disease, using state of the arts genomics and proteomics approaches. These data will be coupled with the development of novel computational methods to decipher the lncRNA “code” that helps to define the role of enhancer RNAs in development and disease.