Jennifer Cremins

Jennifer Cremins is an associate professor and Dean's Faculty Fellow in Bioengineering and Genetics at the University of Pennsylvania, where she established the Cremins Lab in 2014 to explore the principles of chromatin folding that encode neuronal cell fate commitment and synaptic plasticity. The lab employs chromosome-conformation-capture methods, high-throughput sequencing, computational modeling of 3D chromatin structures, and genetic perturbations to link genome architecture with epigenetic states and gene expression patterns during neural development and in disease contexts such as Fragile X syndrome and Alzheimer's disease. Cremins investigates how disruptions in chromatin organization contribute to neurodevelopmental and neurodegenerative disorders, aiming to engineer chromatin topologies for therapeutic interventions in neural regeneration. She earned a B.S. in Chemical Engineering from Clarkson University in 1999 and a Ph.D. in Biomedical Engineering from the Georgia Institute of Technology in 2007. Throughout her tenure at Penn, spanning 2014 to 2025, she held appointments in the Department of Bioengineering in the School of Engineering and Applied Science, the Department of Genetics in the Perelman School of Medicine, and the Epigenetics Institute.

Cremins has garnered major awards including the 2015 NIH Director's New Innovator Award for her studies on the 3D epigenome, the 2021 NIH Director's Pioneer Award titled 'From 3D Genomes to Neural Connectomes: Higher-Order Genome Organization in the Brain,' the 2022 ISSCR Dr. Susan Lim Award for Outstanding Young Investigator, the 2020 NSF CAREER Award, the 2020 CZI Neurodegenerative Disease Pairs Award, and the 2015 Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellowship. She was named a New York Stem Cell Foundation Robertson Investigator in 2014 and a Kavli Frontiers of Science Fellow in 2016 and 2018. Key publications encompass 'Spatially coordinated heterochromatinization of long synaptic genes in fragile X syndrome' (Cell, 2023), 'Cell-type-specific loops linked to RNA polymerase II elongation in human neural differentiation' (Cell Genomics, 2024), 'An integrated view of the structure and function of the human 4D nucleome' (bioRxiv, 2024), and 'MASTR-seq enables multiplexed analysis of short tandem repeats with sequencing' (Cell Reports Methods, 2026). Her contributions have profoundly influenced chromatin biology and neurogenomics, advancing participation in the 4D Nucleome Consortium and delivering seminars on genome structure-function dynamics worldwide.