Mihaela Stefan

Mihaela Stefan, Ph.D.

Area of research

  • Genetic susceptibility of autoimmune thyroid disease (AITD) and type 1 diabetes (T1D); Gene-environment interactions; Epigenetic regulation; Environmental triggers of AITD and T1D.

Email

Phone

Location

  • Albert Einstein College of Medicine Jack and Pearl Resnick Campus 1300 Morris Park Avenue Forchheimer Building 702B Bronx, NY 10461


Research Profiles

Professional Interests

My research focuses on environmental effects on gene regulation and gene expression to identify molecular and cellular mechanisms that trigger development of autoimmune thyroid disease (AITD) and type 1 diabetes (T1D).  In this context, the main focus of my research is to understand the mechanistic post-transcriptional and -translational changes induced by environmental cues (e.g., medications, chemicals, cytokines) that promote AITD and T1D development. By assessing multiple aspects of gene regulation (including chromatin states, transcription factor binding footprints, profiles of different epigenetic markers and posttranscriptional modifications) my research correlates environmental stimuli with variation in mRNA and protein expression to find causal relationship between environment, genetic variation and gene expression.