Eileen Furlong facts for kids

Eileen E. M. Furlong is an Irish scientist who studies how our bodies work at a very tiny level. She is a molecular biologist, which means she looks at the molecules inside cells. Her work helps us understand how our DNA is controlled and how it helps us grow and develop.

She is especially known for her research on enhancers. These are special parts of our DNA that act like switches, turning genes on or off. She also studies how these switches work together in the 3D shape of our DNA. This helps explain how cells decide what they will become during embryogenesis, which is when a baby develops.

Eileen Furlong is currently the Head of the Department of Genome Biology at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL). She became a member of the European Molecular Biology Organization (EMBO) in 2013 and the Academia Europaea in 2016.

Education

Eileen Furlong went to University College Dublin in Ireland. There, she earned her first degree, a Bachelor of Science. Later, she completed her PhD at the Conway Institute, also at UCD. For her PhD, she studied how genes are controlled, working with her advisor, Finian Martin.

Career and Research

After finishing her PhD, Eileen Furlong moved to Stanford University in the United States. She worked as a postdoctoral researcher in Matthew P. Scott's lab. During this time, she helped create new tools to study how genes work during the early stages of development.

In 2002, Eileen Furlong started her own research lab at EMBL. She became the head of her department in 2009. Her team uses different scientific methods to understand how parts of our DNA that don't make proteins still control our genes. They especially study how different muscle types form.

Her group has discovered important things about enhancers. They found that enhancers and promoters (another part of DNA that helps start genes) can form "loops" even before genes are turned on. They also learned that many enhancers can still work even if the larger DNA structure around them changes. This research helps explain how our bodies develop correctly, even with small changes in our DNA.

Eileen Furlong's work has been very important in using new methods to study how embryos develop. For example, her lab helped create special tools like Drosophila microarrays and ways to study DNA in tiny embryos. These tools allow scientists to see how genes are controlled across the entire genome during development.

She also helps guide other scientists by being on the editorial boards of several science journals. These include Developmental Cell and Development. She also helps organize big science conferences.

Awards and Honors

Eileen Furlong has received several important awards for her scientific work. She was chosen as a member of the European Molecular Biology Organization (EMBO) in 2013. In 2016, she became a Member of the Academia Europaea (MAE).

She also received special funding from the European Research Council (ERC) for her research projects. In May 2022, she was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society. This is a very high honor for scientists in the United Kingdom.