Dr. Ciaran Lee studied Genetics at University College Cork (UCC) and obtained his PhD in Molecular Medicine also at UCC. This was followed by two postdoctoral positions in the US at Georgia Institute of Technology and at Rice University. At Rice University he established and directed a Genome Engineering Core to develop genome engineering tools for treating human disease. He returned to UCC in 2019 to investigate the role of the gut microbiome in inflammation as a Marie Curie Fellow. In 2023 he was appointed as a Lecturer in the School of Biochemistry and Cell Biology at UCC.

My research journey began as a PhD student designing Zinc Finger Nucleases to target cystic fibrosis causing mutations (ZFNs for CF correction). As a postdoc researcher I worked on developing CRISPR gene editing for treating sickle cell disease (CRISPR for SCD, CRISPR for SCD pre-clinical), developing systems for in vivo CRISPR gene editing (In vivo CRISPR, in vivo self-deleting CRISPR), applying in vivo CRISPR editing for inborn errors of metabolism (CRISPR for methylmalonic acidemia), and designing methods to improve the safety of gene editing tools (TRACE-seq, HiFi CRISPR, COSMID). Recently I developed a CRISPR based functional genomics approach to identify variants of interest in inflammatory disease (expression CROP-seq). My research focuses on developing gene editing tools for treating genetic diseases and cancer with an emphasis on novel CRISPR based techniques such as base editing, prime editing, and CRISPR transposases. I am also interested in the identification of modifier genes for inherited disorders, engineering synthetic microbes as living d