Karthik Shekhar is a postdoctoral fellow at the Broad Insitute of MIT and Harvard associated with the groups of Prof. Aviv Regev and Prof. Josh Sanes. His work combines genomic measurements and statistical learning techniques to understand the cellular orgnaization of complex tissues. In recent work with experimental collaborators, he applied massively parallel single-cell genomics to generate a complete molecular atlas of neuronal types in the mouse retina, the first of its kind in any part of the mammalian brain. His current efforts focus on using the murine retinal atlas as a foundation to explore three directions: (1) Development : Combining transcriptomic profiling during early development, multiplexed FISH and lineage-tracing to identify cell-fate commitment in the retina, (2) Evolution : Exploring evolutionary conservation of neuronal types at the molecular level across four vertebrate species - mouse, zebrafish, macaque and human, and (3) Neurodegeneration : Characterizing the neuronal and non-neuronal response at high resolution following optic nerve injury, and identifying intrinsic and non-autonomous factors that correlate with selective resilience of certain neuronal types. He was recently awarded the NIH Pathway to Independence Award (K99).