Director, Office of National Labs, Office of the Vice President for Research; Associate Professor, Department of Molecular, Cellular, and Developmental Biology
MONICA DUS is a tenured associate professor, the principal investigator of the Laboratory of Molecular Nutrition, and the Director of the Office of National Labs in the Vice President for Research Office at the University of Michigan. She is an affiliate of the Michigan Neuroscience Institute, the Michigan Obesity and Nutrition Research Center, and the Science, Technology, and Public Policy Program at the Ford School of Public Policy. Dus is a 2023 Guggenheim Fellow, a 2023–2024 White House Fellow, and a 2024–2026 National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine New Voices.
At U-M, Dus leads a multidisciplinary, NIH- and NSF-funded laboratory investigating the interplay between food, genes, and physiology. She also teaches Molecular Genetics, Neuroscience, and Science Communication to ~500 undergraduates annually. Beyond the lab and classroom, she engages with the public through writing, podcasts, and community events on personalized nutrition, genetics, and neuroscience. She is also interested in the role of science in national security, power, and diplomacy, and in how to design strategies and organizational structures that meet the innovation demands of the future.
Dus earned her Ph.D. in Molecular Biology from the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory School of Biological Sciences, where she studied RNA-based gene regulation in the Hannon Lab (HHMI), followed by a postdoctoral fellowship in neurobiology at the Skirball Institute of Biomolecular Medicine at NYU, investigating nutrient sensing mechanisms. She also conducted research at the California Institute of Technology Department of Biology (Benzer lab), The University of Michigan Department of Microbiology and Immunology (Imperiale lab), The Columbia University Department of Human Genetics (Bestor lab), and the University of California Riverside Department of Microbiology (Ding lab).
Visit her lab website to learn more about her and the lab research, public service, and communication work.
Current Courses
MCDB 458-001
Neuroepigenetics
NEURO 458-001
Neuroepigenetics
