Patrick Hsu is an Assistant Professor and Deb Faculty Fellow at the University of California, Berkeley. His work aims to understand and manipulate the genetic circuits that control brain and immune cell function for the next generation of gene and cell therapies.
At Berkeley Bioengineering, Patrick's research group integrates diverse approaches in synthetic biology, bioengineering, and genomics to develop new molecular technologies for genome and transcriptome engineering. CRISPR tools that systematically reverse-engineer cellular processes through rapid and precise perturbations enable causal links between genetic changes and fundamental disease mechanisms. Recently, the Hsu lab discovered and developed novel CRISPR systems that expand the gene editing toolbox beyond DNA to RNA, and continues to build new approaches for cell design and control. These insights will enable us to install cellular upgrades to combat neurodegeneration and cancer.
Patrick received A.M. and Ph.D. degrees from Harvard University. Working with Feng Zhang and Xiaowei Zhuang at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard and the McGovern Institute for Brain Research at MIT, he contributed to the early development of CRISPR-Cas9 technologies for genome engineering in human cells. As a lead scientist at Editas Medicine, he also directed preclinical discovery projects to translate these tools for treating human genetic disorders.
Patrick began his independent group as a Salk-Helmsley Faculty Fellow at the Salk Institute from 2015-2019 before joining UC Berkeley as a faculty member in the Department of Bioengineering. He has been recognized in Forbes' 30 Under 30, the NIH Early Independence Award, the MIT Technology Review's Innovators Under 35, Berkeley Engineering's Deb Faculty Fellowship, and the Rainwater Prize for Innovative Early-Career Scientist. Patrick can be found on Twitter and Google Scholar.