Yale Michaels, PhD

Research summary

The goal of the Cell Programming Lab is to develop better, safer and more affordable cell therapies for cancer and immune disease. To accomplish this goal, we undertake an iterative cycle of “reading” and “writing” the instruction manual for cellular identity. Through single cell genomics and computational modelling, we can “read” the gene expression programs that control cell fate and function. We use genome engineering and synthetic biology to “write” new instruction into the genome to improve differentiation of stem cells into immune cells and to enhance the therapeutic functionality of immune cell therapies.

Brief bio

Yale Michaels is an assistant professor in the Department of Biochemistry and Medical Genetics in the Rady Faculty of Health Sciences at the University of Manitoba and a scientist at the Paul Albrechtsen Research Institute CCMB.

Yale obtained a bachelor’s degree in molecular and cellular biology from Harvard University where he conducted origins-of-life research in professor Jack Szostak’s lab. He completed a PhD (DPhil) in Medical Science at Oxford University’s Weatherall Institute of Molecular Medicine under the supervision of professor Tudor Fulga and professor Tom Milne. The subject of his doctoral thesis was developing a new tool for precisely controlling gene expression levels in mammalian cells.

From 2019 to 2022, Yale was a Banting and Michael Smith Health Research BC postdoctoral fellow in professor Peter Zandstra’s lab at the University of British Columbia’s School of Biomedical Engineering. While in the Zandstra lab, he developed a clinically translatable method for differentiating pluripotent stem cells into T cells.

Education

• PhD (DPhil), University of Oxford, Oxford, UK, 2014-2019
• A.B. Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 2009-2013. Concentration: Molecular and Cellular Biology, Secondary Field: Astrophysics 

Awards

• Banting Postdoctoral Fellowship, two-year funded postdoctoral fellowship (2020)
• Radcliffe Department of Medicine graduate prize for Most Outstanding Doctoral Research, University of Oxford (2019)
• Michael Smith Foundation for Health Research Trainee Award, three-year funded postdoctoral fellowship (2019)
• Keystone Symposia Future of Science Scholarship (2019)
• Ita Askonas medal, Best Student Project and Presentation, Weatherall Institute of Molecular Medicine (2018)
• American Association for Cancer Research/Parker Institute for Cancer Immunotherapy Scholar in Training Award (2017)