A Message from the Interim Senior Vice President & Dean, John Sealy School of Medicine, and Chief Research Officer
Dear colleagues,
We are pleased to announce that Erez Lieberman Aiden, PhD, has been appointed Chair of the Department of Biochemistry & Molecular Biology at the University of Texas Medical Branch (UTMB), effective Aug. 12, 2025. He will also serve as Professor of BioSciences at Rice University, strengthening ties between our institutions.
Dr. Aiden joins us from Baylor College of Medicine, where he was a tenured Professor of Molecular and Human Genetics and Director of the Center for Genome Architecture. He received his PhD in Applied Mathematics and in Medical Engineering & Medical Physics from Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and holds both an MA in Applied Physics from Harvard and an MA in History from Yeshiva University. He was a Fellow of the Harvard Society of Fellows and a Visiting Faculty member at Google.
Dr. Aiden pioneered the Hi-C method for three-dimensional DNA sequencing, revealing how the human genome folds inside the cell nucleus. His team created the first comprehensive maps of genome loops and proposed that loops form inside the nucleus via cohesin-mediated extrusion — now widely accepted as a foundational principle of DNA biochemistry. His group also developed methods to engineer 3D genome architecture by editing as little as a single base pair.
Through these advancements, his lab showed how to use Hi-C to assemble complex eukaryotic genomes into whole chromosomes for thousands, rather than millions of dollars. Most recently, he and collaborators reported the discovery of 52,000-year-old “chromosome fossils” in woolly mammoth skin, enabling genome assembly and transcriptional analysis of an extinct species.
Earlier in his career, Dr. Aiden co-created the Google Ngram Viewer, which helped launch the scientific study of large language datasets by enabling researchers to track linguistic and cultural change over centuries. Now a permanent Google product, it has been used billions of times worldwide.
Dr. Aiden’s research has appeared multiple times on the covers of Nature, Science, and Cell, and on the front pages of The New York Times, The Boston Globe, and The Wall Street Journal. His honors include the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers, Technology Review’s TR35, Cell’s “40 Under 40,” and recognition on the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives for his laboratory’s discoveries about the structure of DNA.
We thank Dr. Sanja Sever for her strong interim leadership. The Department of BMB is poised to build on its legacy of groundbreaking discovery, innovation, and education in human health and disease. We are excited to welcome Dr. Aiden, whose exceptional leadership will guide the department into an inspiring new chapter.
Sincerely yours,
Antonio Bianco, MD, PhD