I am a bioinformatics and genomics scientist fascinated by how our cells decode the regulatory DNA in our genome to orchestrate transcriptional responses. My laboratory develops computational and experimental technologies to study how transcription is regulated, analyzing how regulatory DNA, transcription, epigenetics, and 3D genome structure exert influence on one another. The laboratory leverages experimental methods to profile transcription initiation in the genome (e.g. csRNA-seq, TSS-MPRA), which provide sensitive measurements of regulatory element activity at single-nucleotide resolution. The unique properties of these approaches are then used to model how transcriptional networks respond to inflammatory stimuli or other pathological conditions and monitor the impact that non-coding genetic variation plays in perturbing transcriptional responses. The laboratory also collaborates with multiple groups to study viral host-pathogen interactions, cellular development, chronic inflammatory diseases, and substance abuse. We also continue to develop genomics software, exemplified by HOMER and the pathway enrichment tool Metascape, that can be leveraged by the scientific community to improve the interpretation of genomics data.