Nipam Patel is the Director of the Marine Biological Lab (Woods Hole) and a Professor at the University of Chicago. He obtained his bachelor’s degree in Biology from Princeton University in 1984, and completed his doctoral degree in Biological Sciences at Stanford University in 1990. His interest towards developmental biology started when he was studying the development of chicks in high school. Today, his laboratory studies the genes involved in the evolution and development of segmentation and regionalization of the body plan. Specifically, he is interested in the role of homeotic (Hox) genes in generating body plan diversification in crustaceans, and the development of nanostructures that create structural colors in butterflies.
Patel was a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator from 2003 to 2010, and is an elected fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (2008). Prior to joining MBL, Patel was a Professor at the University of California, Berkeley from 2003-2018. Learn more about Patel’s research at his lab website.
