Acadia Kocher

Graduate student

Acadia studied genetics and molecular biology at Northwestern University before joining the Noonan lab in 2016. She is interested in how changes in gene regulation can facilitate the evolution of species-specific features. She works with a humanized mouse model in which a region of the mouse genome has been replaced with its human counterpart, an enhancer active during brain development. Using this model, she aims to characterize aspects of embryonic development that are affected by humanization.

Acadia is supported by an NSF Graduate Research Fellowship.