Dr. Emily Freund grew up in Palo Alto, California. She left the sunshine state to earn her B.A. in Biology from Carleton College in Northfield, Minnesota. She returned to California in 2005, where she enrolled in graduate school at UC Berkeley and began training as a geneticist with Dr. Barbara Meyer. She studied the connection between gene expression regulation and chromosome structure, earning a Ph.D. in Molecular and Cell Biology in 2011. She is currently a NIH IRACDA postdoctoral fellow at Stanford University, which allows her to do research while also teaching as a visiting professor at San Jose State University. At Stanford she works in Dr. Jin Li's lab, where she is currently setting up a screening system to look for regulators of RNA editing. Dysregulation of RNA editing has been linked to neurological diseases and cancers, and its complete loss is lethal. Emily is passionate about the rapidly expanding field of personal genomics, which will soon be an indispensable resource for improving patient health.
In the spirit of ideas worth spreading, TEDx is a program of local, self-organized events that bring people together to share a TED-like experience. At a TEDx event, TEDTalks video and live speakers combine to spark deep discussion and connection in a small group. These local, self-organized events are branded TEDx, where x = independently organized TED event. The TED Conference provides general guidance for the TEDx program, but individual TEDx events are self-organized.* (*Subject to certain rules and regulations)
