Timothy Chang, MD, PhD
Fellow, Boston Children's Hospital
Former RTI Lab: MD, PhD Candidate, Zamore Lab
Training Period: 2007 - 2018
Prior Academic Degree Institution: Stanford University
Awards: Gold Humanism Honor Society inductee
Tim received his bachelor of science degree in biology at Stanford University, where he studied the effects of maternal inflammation on fetal neurogenesis. While at Stanford, he became interested in small RNAs, so he went to the University of Massachusetts Medical School to pursue an MD/PhD. For his graduate work in Phillip Zamore’s lab, he studied how piRNAs, germline small RNAs that are created from repetitive sequences such as transposons (endogenous retroviruses), are created and are required for genome stability. While transposons need to be expressed to make piRNAs, unregulated transposon expression leads to mutations and cellular damage. To address this paradox, Tim discovered that the protein Maelstrom is required to safely express these potentially dangerous sequences as piRNA precursors through a non-canonical transcriptional pathway. While at UMass, he was elected to the Gold Humanism Honor Society and fell in love with pediatric hematology and oncology. After medical school, he completed his residency training in the Boston Combined Residency Program (BCRP) in the Accelerated Research Pathway.