Marybeth Baumgartner

Postdoctoral researcher

Marybeth is interested in the genetic underpinnings of brain evolution, neurodevelopment, and cell type specification. As a postdoctoral fellow in the Noonan lab, she has focused on parsing the genetics of cortical expansion in human evolution by utilizing multiple experimental fronts. She has developed humanized mouse models to study the impact of regulatory elements with uniquely human activity on gene expression and cortical development. In parallel, she has leveraged mouse models of neurodevelopmental conditions, such as autism spectrum disorder, and single-cell transcriptome analyses to establish how disrupting specific genes impacts individual cell types over time and contributes to these conditions. She is also designing complementary screens in 2D neural stem cells, the major proliferating cell type in the developing brain, to inform target selection for humanized mouse generation.

Marybeth completed her undergraduate studies at Mount Holyoke College and earned a PhD in physiology and neurobiology from the University of Connecticut in 2019. She joined the Noonan lab in 2020 and is supported by an F32 fellowship from NICHD.