Nezar Alexander Abdennur

Nezar Alexander Abdennur is an Assistant Professor at UMass Chan Medical School's Department of Genomics and Computational Biology. He holds affiliate roles at T.H. Chan School of Medicine and Morningside Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences, spanning departments like Systems Biology and Biophysical/Chemical Computational Biology.

Education: BS in Biochemistry/Mathematics (University of Ottawa), MS in Bioinformatics (University of Ottawa), and PhD in Biomedical Sciences (Massachusetts Institute of Technology).

Research focuses on chromatin organization, genome architecture, and computational genomics. Key interests include loop extrusion mechanisms, epigenetic regulation, and Hi-C data analysis. His work bridges experimental and computational approaches to uncover principles of 3D genome organization and its functional implications in cell differentiation and disease.

Notable contributions include developing tools like Cooler, Cooltools, and Pairtools for analyzing Hi-C data, and studies on cohesin's role in chromatin remodeling. His publications span topics from immune cell differentiation to metabolic genetics, often appearing in journals like Nature, Cell, and PLoS Computational Biology.

Labs/Teams: Leads a team at UMass Chan Medical School focused on genome organization and computational genomics. Collaborates with institutions like Harvard's T.H. Chan School of Medicine and MIT.