PI

Helen obtained her PhD at Stanford University with James Nelson, studying how epithelial cell polarity is established, using cultured mammalian cells. She then conducted her postdoctoral studies with Mike Simon ( also at Stanford), using Drosophila genetics to investigate how tissues become polarized, via planar cell polarity signaling. She set up her own lab at the ICRF/CRUK in London England, where her lab first studied Fat cadherins and linked them to the regulation of growth through the Hippo pathway. She then moved her lab to the Lunenfeld Research Institute in Mount Sinai Hospital and the University of Toronto in Toronto, Canada where she expanded these studies to mice and hydra. In 2018, Helen moved to Washington University School of Medicine, where her lab continues to study how groups of cells become organized in development. The lab uses cell biology, genetics and molecular approaches in diverse models ,to understand how Fat cadherins and the Hippo pathway coordinately regulate tissue patterning and growth. Recent work in her lab has expanded to investigation of how chromatin organization and fertility are controlled in flies, mice and humans.