Alexis received her B. S. degree in chemistry from the University of California, Berkeley in December of 2008. She then joined the lab of Jacqueline Barton at the California Institute of Technology for her doctoral studies. While at Caltech, she worked as an NSF Graduate Research Fellow on the design, synthesis, and study of DNA mismatch-binding metal complexes and received her Ph.D. in 2014. She pursued postdoctoral work as a Ruth Kirschstein NIH Postdoctoral Fellow in the laboratory of David Liu, where she developed base editing, a new approach to genome editing that enables the direct, irreversible chemical conversion of one target DNA base into another in a programmable manner, without requiring double-stranded DNA backbone cleavage. Alexis joined the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry at the University of California at San Diego in 2017, where her lab develops and applies new precision genome editing techniques to the functional genomics field. Alexis’s contributions in teaching, mentoring, and research have been recognized through many awards.

Antony received his Ph.D. in Molecular Endocrinology at The University of Manchester in 2006. He then pursued post-doctoral research at the University of Liverpool, developing recombinant Bacterial Artificial Chromosomes for the single cell microscopy of NF-kappaB translocation dynamics, and the impact on gene expression, in both cell lines and transgenic animal models. Antony joined The University of Manchester as Senior Experimental Officer at the Transgenic Unit core facility in 2014, and has been Manager at the rebranded Genome Editing Unit since 2018. His roles include the integration and application of CRISPR-Cas9 gene editing to assist in the development of custom experimental models, including novel mouse and cultured cell models, as well as teaching and training users in the application of these cutting-edge techniques, and delivering expert consultation.