Kaelan Brennan

Profile

Kaelan first arrived in the Zeitlinger lab in the summer of 2016 as a Stowers Summer Scholar. At the time, he already had experience in studying epigenetics and chromatin biology in Drosophila development through working with Dr. Vikki Weake as an undergraduate student at Purdue University. He had analyzed the tissue-specific target genes of the SAGA chromatin remodeling complex during fly visual development, which stimulated his interest in better understanding transcription. As a summer scholar in the Zeitlinger lab, he studied the putative pioneer transcription factor Lola and became captivated by the exciting genomic, computational, and imaging approaches used in the lab to study transcriptional regulation during development. After graduating from Purdue University with a B.S. in Biochemistry and a brief stint at the University of California, Berkeley, Kaelan decided to rejoin the Zeitlinger lab in November 2017. Currently, Kaelan is working to understand how different promoter elements control transcriptional dynamics using live imaging. Outside of the lab, Kaelan loves going on long runs, getting coffee, and spending time with friends and family.