Dr. Stein’s lab explores how variations in the genome change the structure and development of the brain, and in doing so, create risk for neuropsychiatric illness. He studies genetic effects on multiple aspects of the human brain, from macroscale phenotypes like gross human brain structure measured with MRI to molecular phenotypes like gene expression and chromatin accessibility measured with genome-sequencing technologies. His team also uses neural progenitor cells as a modifiable and high fidelity model system to understand how disease-associated variants affect brain development.