Morgan Maeder, Ph.D.

Morgan Maeder, Ph.D.
Head of Research

Morgan Maeder has 20 years of experience in the field of gene editing.  Prior to joining Aurora she was Vice President, Head of Payload Sciences at Chroma Medicine, where she led teams in the development of programmable epigenetic editors to specifically modulate gene expression and provide novel, durable treatment options to patients suffering from a wide range of genetically treatable diseases.

Prior to Chroma, Dr. Maeder spent a year and a half as a consultant to Third Rock Ventures helping to launch Faze Medicines, a biotech company pioneering therapeutics based on the science of biomolecular condensates and their formation through the process of liquid-liquid phase separation. She began her career in industry at Editas Medicine as the first Scientist. Over five years at the company she held roles of increasing responsibility, and led the development of EDIT-101, a CRISPR-Cas9-based gene editing approach to treat Leber Congenital Amaurosis type 10. EDIT-101 became the first in vivo use of a CRISPR genome editing medicine with the dosing of the first patient in the BRILLIANCE clinical trial in March of 2020.

Dr. Maeder holds a B.A. in biology from Connecticut College and obtained her Ph.D. in genetics from Harvard University in the lab of J. Keith Joung, where her work spanned multiple platforms, from zinc fingers and TALEs to CRISPR-Cas9, and from nuclease-based gene editing to epigenetic-based gene regulation.