Today at Brown

Erica Larschan doesn’t officially begin her Brown University faculty position until January 2010. But in a recent telephone conversation, she was animated and enthusiastic as she talked about her upcoming job as an assistant professor of biology in the Department of Molecular Biology, Cell Biology and Biochemistry.

“I feel very fortunate,” said Larschan, 33, who is winding down her position as a postdoctoral fellow at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston. “Research flourishes at Brown and the quality of the students attracted me very much.”

Larschan will spend her first year at Brown ramping up her lab. Her area of focus is transcription and gene regulation, the study of how genes are turned on and off at different times during development.

While looking at this process, Larschan is particularly interested in examining how specific regions of DNA are identified and regulated within a highly compacted genome. Answering this question is important because many cancers are caused by changes in gene regulation, she said.

“By determining how gene regulation occurs there is the potential for altering it and preventing tumor formation,” she said.

Larschan said she has always been interested in the genome, going back to her first days at Wellesley College (she graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in biochemistry). Back then, the genome itself was making history, and she took notice.

“When I was first in college, the human genome was just getting sequenced,” Larschan said. “I was very excited to know how the genome is regulated.” She continued her work at Harvard Medical School, where she earned a Ph.D. in biological and biomedical sciences.

Larschan and her husband, David Negro, live in Needham, Mass. with their 11-month-old son Jasper. She plans to remain there and commute by train to Providence.

Outside of work, Larschan and her husband often have enjoyed hiking and biking.

She said she wants to be at Brown for a “long time,” in part because of her new department’s reputation.

“It has a very long history of mentoring young faculty members,” she said. “There are lots of senior people and very excited young faculty. They really do foster the young faculty, which is important.”

Larschan is also looking for graduate students to work in her new lab. She plans to do some recruiting at a retreat for graduate students who are looking for lab postings, and she will be at an upcoming “Faculty on Parade” seminar as well — an event where faculty who are seeking graduate students for their labs offer half-hour seminars on their work.