Selin Jessa, PhD
Post-doctoral scientist, Stanford University
Hi, I’m Selin, a computational biologist and a post-doc based jointly in Dr. Anshul Kundaje’s lab and Dr. Will Greenleaf’s lab in the Department of Genetics at Stanford University. I use integrative computational analyses of omics data types together with deep learning to study how transcription factors shape cell identity during development and disease. I’m especially interested in how DNA sequence is organized in the non-coding regions of the genome.
I did my PhD in Dr. Claudia Kleinman’s lab in the Quantitative Life Sciences program at McGill University in Montreal, Canada. During my PhD, I focused on data-driven approaches to identify cell-of-origin in pediatric brain tumors. I care about bioinformatics and computational biology research that emphasizes reproducbility, transparency, and re-usability. 
news
| Oct 1, 2025 | Through an awesome collaboration with Tong Wang, we showed how deep learning models can used to tackle the issue of off-target edits from therapeutic CRISPR editors used in gene therapies. Tong developed a new method, beCasKAS to sensitively detect off-target sites, and I show how non-coding edits can be triaged for epigenetic dysregulation using deep learning. The preprint is out! |
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| Apr 30, 2025 | Our preprint on deciphering the landscape of chromatin accessibility and modeling the DNA sequence syntax rules underlying gene regulation during human fetal development is now up on bioRxiv! This is my first postdoc project and a huge joint effort with Betty Liu, Sam Kim & Yan Ting Ng; led by Will Greenleaf and Anshul Kundaje at Stanford and Kyle Farh’s team at Illumina’s AI lab. |
| Aug 30, 2023 | After 10 years in Montreal and 7 amazing years in the Kleinman lab, this week I move to California to start a post-doc in the Kundaje & Greenleaf labs at Stanford - excited for a new chapter! |
| Feb 14, 2023 | Thrilled to have successfully defended my PhD!! |
| Feb 2, 2023 | In November, my supervisor, Dr. Claudia Kleinman, presented at the Canadian Epigenetics, Environment and Health Research Consortium (CEEHRC) seminar series. I gave a 5-min trainee talk on our recent work on cell-of-origin in pediatric gliomas, and our talk is now online here |
| Dec 5, 2022 | Our paper on cell-of-origin in H3K27M pedatric gliomas is out this week in Nature Genetics ! Check out the press release here |
| Jun 30, 2022 | This month, I was at the workshop on Deep learning for genetics, genomics, and meta-genomics at the Banff International Research Station; my talk on my PhD work is online here |
selected publications
- Cancer research Nov 2024
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- Bioinformatics Nov 2018