Jen is a 4th year PhD student in the Computational and Systems Biology PhD program at MIT. She received her B.S. in Computer Science and Biology from Tufts University in 2016, where she first fell in love with research when studying the incredible regenerative capabilities of the planarian flatworm. Her current research applies techniques from machine learning and functional genomics to study the establishment of cell type via chromatin accessibility to 1) identify transcription factors that can be used to direct cells from the pluripotent stem cell state into specialized cell types and 2) enable prediction and interpretation of the effects of variation in non-coding DNA sequence on chromatin accessibility. In her free time, she likes playing the violin and ukulele, gardening, and baking.