Rubicon grant for Harm-Jan Westra

Dr. Harm-Jan Westra has been awarded an NWO Rubicon grant to continue his postdoc work at Harvard Medical School, Boston. His project is entitled "Localization of autoimmune disease alleles in specific regulatory genomic regions in CD4+ cells".
It is unclear how genetic variation leads to disease. In this project we want to determine where the genetic variants that are involved in type 1 diabetes, rheumatoid arthritis and celiac disease function, specifically in which cells and cellular regions.

Harm-Jan graduated cum laude with his PhD thesis "Interpreting disease genetics using functional genomics" last September.