Susan Dymecki

In 1998, Dymecki joined the faculty at Harvard Medical School and became an associate professor in the Department of Genetics. Dymecki's involvement with graduate education led her to become the associate director of the Biological and Biomedical Sciences PhD program in 2004. By 2010, Dymecki was promoted to Full Professor in the Department of Genetics, and the following year she became the Director of the Biological and Biomedical Science PhD Program at Harvard.

During Dymecki's postdoctoral work at the Carnegie Institute, she pioneered the development of novel vectors that enabled targeted genetic manipulation of specific populations of mammalian cells. Using Flp recombinase, Dymecki shows that her genetic constructs can be expressed in mammalian cells to activate specific genes. In a following paper in 1996, Dymecki showed that her tool not only worked in cell culture, but also in vivo in living transgenic mice to mediate gene insertion and deletion via recombination at FRT sites. Dymecki's paper was the inaugural paper to show that Flp technology could be used to make specific alterations to the mouse genome.

After completing her master's degree, she pursued her MD-PhD in 1985 at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, studying under Stephen Desiderio. During her PhD, Dymecki discovered a new gene expressed in B cells, called blk for B Lymphoid Kinase, which helps to initiate an immune response. After completing her MD-PhD training in 1992, Dymecki became a Helen Hay Whitney Fellow and John Merck Scholar at the Carnegie Institution for Science in the Department of Embryology in Washington, DC. While completing her postdoctoral training, she pioneered novel genetic tools with which to study development in the mammalian nervous system. In 1997, Dymecki filed a patent for her genetic tool, which consisted of DNA constructs that enable transgenic expression of FRT recombination sites and a Flp recombinase in non-human mammals. Her technology has aided many researchers in achieving gene insertion, deletion, and modulation as well as label cell lineages to explore developmental stages.

Susan M. Dymecki (born June 19, 1960) is an American geneticist and neuroscientist and director of the Biological and Biomedical Sciences PhD Program at Harvard University. Dymecki is also a professor in the Department of Genetics and the principal investigator of the Dymecki Lab at Harvard. Her lab characterizes the development and function of unique populations of serotonergic neurons in the mouse brain. To enable this functional dissection, Dymecki has pioneered several transgenic tools for probing neural circuit development and function. Dymecki also competed internationally as an ice dancer, placing 7th in the 1980 U.S. Figure Skating Championships.

Dymecki was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on June 19, 1960. Before becoming a scientist, Dymecki was a competitive ice dancer. She started ice dancing when she was 13 years old and competed at the national level within the United States during high school.