Lucas Farnung

Lucas Farnung is an Assistant Professor of Cell Biology at Harvard Medical School, where he leads a research group investigating the structural mechanisms of chromatin transcription and epigenetics. He earned his Ph.D. from Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich and completed postdoctoral training as a Project Leader at the Max Planck Institute for Biophysical Chemistry. His research integrates cryo-electron microscopy, biochemistry, and genome biology to elucidate how transcription machinery navigates chromatin, with recent breakthroughs including the structural basis of H3K36 trimethylation by SETD2 and the resolution of hexasome-nucleosome complexes by Chd1 and FACT, both published in 2024. His work also spans transcription-coupled DNA repair and co-transcriptional RNA processing. Farnung maintains extensive international collaborations across Germany, the United States, the United Kingdom, Austria, Switzerland, Finland, and Sweden, and has secured major funding for his research on chromatin, transcription, and epigenetics.