Nicholas was among the Kavli Center's first graduate student Fellows and upon finishing his PhD in the Plant and Microbial Biology Department, he transitioned to a postdoctoral position in Brian Staskawicz's lab while continuing his work with the Kavli Center as a Postdoctoral Fellow. Broadly, Nicholas's research focuses on the applications of gene editing in agriculture focusing on climate change adaptation. In the lab, he uses CRISPR/Cas9 to understand the development of stomata in rice for improved drought resilience. Nicholas has experience teaching about gene editing around the...
Matthew Norstad's Kavli Center fellowship coincided with his last semester in the Masters of Public Health, Health Policy & Management degree program at the UC Berkeley School of Public Health. With an academic and professional background in bioethics, health policy, and genomics, Norstad is particularly interested in the social and economic consequences of new gene editing therapies. These new technologies offer the first opportunity for the treatment of debilitating genetic conditions but have entered the market with record-breaking prices, putting them out of reach of many patients...