Oliver Hobert

Hobert Lab Website

Dr. Oliver Hobert is a Professor of Biological Sciences at Columbia University and holds secondary appointments in the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biophysics and the Department of Systems Biology at Columbia University Medical Center. He has received his Diploma in Biochemistry at the University of Bayreuth in Germany and earned his doctorate for thesis work done at the Max Planck Institute for Biochemistry in Martinsried. After his postdoc at Harvard Medical School on Boston, he joined the faculty at Columbia University in 1999 and has been an Investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute since 2005. He is a recipient of the Mossman Award, the Jacob Javits Award and is an elected fellow of the AAAS and an Associate Member of EMBO. He was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 2024.

Nervous system development and function (hobertlab.org)

We seek to understand how cell types in the nervous system are genetically programmed to acquire their unique identities. Taking a whole nervous system perspective in the nematode C. elegans, we use multiple approaches to define, in detail, the “hard-wired” gene regulatory networks that specify cellular differentiation programs throughout the nervous system. In addition, we are exploring how neuronal identity becomes re-specified by external and internal parameters, such as environmental conditions or the sexual identity of the organism. More recently we have also become much interested in how neuronal cell type specification mechanisms evolve. Lastly, we are also committed to developing, improving, and customizing methodologies to further advance C. elegans (as well as other nematodes) as a genetic model system.