Dr. Tilgner is an Assistant Professor of Neuroscience at the Brain and Mind Research Institute (BMRI) of Weill Cornell Medicine as of 2016. He obtained his M.Sc. degrees from Germany (Karlsruhe Institute of Technology) and from France (Ecole Nationale d’Informatique et des Mathematiques Appliquees de Grenoble – ENSIMAG and Universite Joseph Fourier) in Computer Science and Bioinformatics. He carried out his PhD research under the supervision of Professor Roderic Guigo at the Center for Genomic Research (CRG) in Barcelona, Spain, focusing on the mechanism and dynamics of RNA splicing. In 2011, he moved to the Genetics Department of Stanford University to the laboratory of Professor Michael Snyder, where he was instrumental in developing various techniques for full-length RNA isoform profiling. His main interest is understanding how different isoforms (“what genes are saying”) expand on simple gene expression measurements (“how much genes are talking”) in specifying cellular function in the nervous system and disease. He will use the Leon Levy fellowship to study heterogeneity in RNA isoform usage across brain regions.
