Dixon lab
Principal Investigator
Jesse-Dixon-551A9712-0252-767

Jesse Dixon MD, PhD

Associate Professor

Jesse attended Princeton University for his undergraduate where he obtained a degree in Molecular Biology. He then completed his MD and PhD at the University of California San Diego. His PhD was in Biomedical Sciences, where he worked in the lab of Bing Ren studying genome wide principles of higher-order chromatin structure. He began his independent career at Salk as an independent fellow as part of the Helmsley Salk Fellows Program. He is currently an Associate Professor in the Gene Expression Laboratory.
Postdoctoral Fellows
Tessa-Popay

Tessa Popay

Postdoctoral Fellow

Tessa received her undergraduate degree in Biomedical Sciences from the University of Auckland, New Zealand, before eventually receiving her PhD from the Department of Cell and Developmental Biology at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, TN. She is interested in understanding how components of the looping machinery modulate chromatin architecture, and how this subsequently influences transcriptional regulation, both in a steady-state context and in response to exogenous cues.
Yunwen-Wu

Yunwen Wu

Postdoctoral Fellow

Yunwen received her undergraduate degree from Southwest University and earned her PhD in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology from Zhejiang University in China. Her research interests focus on understanding the dynamics of chromatin architectures and how it influences transcription during developmental processes. Outside the lab, she enjoys exploring new foods, traveling, and spending time with her family.

Graduate Students
Morgan-Black

Morgan Black

Graduate Student

Morgan graduated from UC Santa Barbara with a BS in Biochemistry & Molecular Biology. She then worked as a research assistant in the Dixon lab before joining as a graduate student in 2024. She is interested in understanding the role of 3D genome architecture in unstable genomic environments, particularly in the regulation of DNA damage repair and replication timing. In her free time, she enjoys cooking, baking, and spending time at the beach.
Tula-Keal

Tula Keal

Graduate Student

Tula obtained her undergraduate and master’s degrees from Arizona State University in Molecular and Cell Biology. As a PhD student in the Biomedical Sciences Program at UCSD, she studies the role of genome organizing factors in facilitating oncogene activation at structural variants. Specifically, she is interested in how structural variants can promote brain tumor progression through these mechanisms. In her free time, Tula likes to cook, explore old movies, and see live music.

Ami-Pant

Ami Pant

Graduate Student

Ami graduated from UCLA with a BS in Biochemistry and a Statistics and Data Science Minor. She worked as a research assistant for two years before joining the lab as a PhD student in 2025. She is interested in the role of the cohesin subunit NIPBL in mediating cell cycle progression and its role in maintaining sister chromatid cohesion. She enjoys her free time at the beach, visiting national parks, and hanging out with friends.

Master’s Students
Meghana-Hariprasad

Meghana Hariprasad

Master’s Student

Meghana recently graduated from UC San Diego with a BS in Molecular and Cell Biology. As a Master’s student in Biology at UCSD, she studies the role of CTCF in the formation of Topologically Associating Domains (TADs) across diverse metazoan species. In her free time, she enjoys playing tennis, spending time outdoors with her friends, and cooking.

Dixon lab alumni

Postdoctoral Fellows

Zhichao Xu, PhD

Current Position:
Assistant Professor
UT Health Houston

Dong-Sung Lee, PhD

Current position:
Associate Professor
Seoul National University
Research Assistants

Sabrina Diaz

Nicholas Haghani

Femke Munting

Jean Yasis

Samantha Marcotte

Sofia Dallarda

Kate Cho

Ben Clock

Victoria Le

Rosalind Bump

Sahaana Chandran