Geisel School of Medicine Dean Duane Compton, PhD, has announced that Marnie Halpern, PhD, has been reappointed to a second term as chair of the Department of Molecular and Systems Biology. Halpern has served as chair since 2020, and was named the Andrew Thomson, Jr. MD 1946 Professor at Geisel in 2021.

“I’m so pleased to continue Marnie’s leadership of the department,” says Compton. “She’s had a major impact in recruiting new faculty and in building cohesiveness in our community. I’m excited to continue working with her to further build the scientific strength of the department.”
Halpern’s lab uses zebrafish to study how the nervous system develops and controls behavior. She and her team focus their research on left-right differences in the brain—to determine how they emerge, which genes control asymmetry, and how they impact function and behavior. Since the zebrafish’s cell physiology is like that of humans, it serves as a valuable genetic model for studying a large number of diseases, from neurological disorders to cancer.
“I’m happy to see that the dean and the department have confidence in my leadership,” says Halpern. “I’ve enjoyed working with the chairs in the other departments who were very helpful when I transitioned to Dartmouth in 2020. The five years have gone by quickly, full of challenging events like fires, floods, and the epidemic. But it’s been a never boring and rewarding experience.”
Halpern’s overall goals in her second term as chair will include “building on the great science we have going on here, both in my lab and across the department,” she says. “One of our strengths is that we have a very diverse department with successful scientists working on everything from Wnt signaling to Parkinson’s disease to cancer.”

Originally from Canada, Halpern received her Bachelor’s degree in biology from McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario, and her Master’s degree at McMaster University Medical Center, where she focused on Herpes virus gene regulation. She went on to Yale to obtain her PhD in biology, studying Drosophila (fruit fly) neuromuscular development, before going to the University of Oregon for her post-doctoral research on zebrafish. In 1994, she joined the staff of the Carnegie Institution for Science’s Department of Embryology and John Hopkins University as an adjunct faculty member.
Halpern has received many awards for her work, including being named a Pew Scholar in Biomedical Sciences and a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. She earned a prestigious Merit Award in 2017 from the NIH to support her research on left-right differences in the brain. Halpern has also served on scientific and professional society boards, including the Society for Developmental Biology and the Genetics Society of America. In 2023, she was elected to the Society for Developmental Biology Academy.
Thinking back on her first term as chair, Halpern can point to several key accomplishments. “We’ve recruited three excellent junior faculty since I arrived, and we have a search on right now for a fourth new faculty member,” she says. “They’re all doing well, and it’s been really exciting to watch them establish their careers at Dartmouth.
“I’m also proud of the connections we’ve made with colleagues and departments across Dartmouth to advance our programs—including working closely with Margaret Karagas (chair of Epidemiology) to put the NIH FIRST grant proposal together; as well as with Barbara Jobst (chair of Neurology) and other neuroscientists at Dartmouth to establish the new Integrative Neuroscience Graduate Program. And as a department, with the help of operations director Cheryl Bush and our great administrative team, we’ve worked hard to develop a strong sense of community that spans our labs’ locations in both Hanover and Lebanon.”
“Our department has a strong emphasis on genetic and genomic approaches to study fundamental mechanisms in development and disease. That’s something that bridges us with lots of research areas across Dartmouth."- Marnie Halpern, PhD
As she looks ahead, Halpern is excited about the opportunities for her department and the field of molecular and systems biology. “The fact that we can manipulate the genome using CRISPR technology has really changed the way we do experiments,” she explains. “Our department has a strong emphasis on genetic and genomic approaches to study fundamental mechanisms in development and disease. That’s something that bridges us with lots of research areas across Dartmouth. I’m really looking forward to seeing how these collaborations will play out in the future.”
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