Professor of Biology

Overview

Will Fairbrother majored in Chemistry at Oberlin College (Oberlin, OH) and received his PhD from Columbia University in 2000. Dr. Fairbrother was a PhRMA Post-doctoral Fellow in Informatics at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) under mentorship of Christopher Burge and Nobel Laureate Phillip Sharp. Dr Fairbrother is currently a tenured, full professor in the MCB Department and Hassenfeld scholar at Brown. His research has focused on precision medicine and RNA genomics. Research contributions include developing the first computational definition of exonic splicing enhancers and  the first large scale annotation of branchpoints in human introns. The Fairbrother lab developed a novel deep sequencing technique for map of branchpoints in human introns.  - mapping branchpoint locations in approximately 40% of human introns.   The Fairbrother lab developed a biochemical screen for predicting the effects of disease mutations on gene processing -  approximately 1/3 of all hereditary disease mutations affect the processing of genes. This technology is being implemented in the Geisinger patient cohort for the purpose of understanding how variation affects human health. 

On a completely separate note, Will is a visual artist. You can see his oil paintings and drawings here

Brown Affiliations

Research Areas

On the Web