Dr. Mitchell O’Connell is an Assistant Professor of Biochemistry and Biophysics at University of Rochester and a member of the Center for RNA Biology. Mitchell obtained his PhD in Biochemistry at the University of Sydney under the supervision of Prof. Joel Mackay, where he studied RNA-binding zinc fingers and used combinatorial techniques to design artificial zinc fingers with new RNA-binding specificities. After completing his PhD, Mitchell was a postdoctoral fellow in the lab of Dr. Jennifer Doudna at the University of California, Berkeley, where he made a number of discoveries related to the ability for CRISPR-Cas systems to target RNA. In 2015, he was awarded an NHMRC CJ Martin Postdoctoral Fellowship. In 2017, he moved to the University of Rochester and set his own lab, which focuses on understanding the biochemical mechanisms of RNA-mediated gene regulation, the development of new CRISPR-based tools to study these processes, and more recently understanding the role of CRISPR-Cas membrane proteins in anti-phage defense. This work is supported by an Outstanding Investigator Grant (MIRA) from the NIH.