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Silvana Konermann

Co-founder, Executive Director and Core Investigator, leading the Konermann Lab, Arc Institute

Silvana Konermann is a co-founder, the Executive Director and a Core Investigator of the Arc Institute, and an Assistant Professor of Biochemistry at Stanford. Konermann's lab develops and applies functional genomics, including CRISPR tools for engineering RNA, to study the cellular pathways behind neurodegenerative disease such as Alzheimer's disease.12

At a glance

Current roles
Co-founder, Executive Director and Core Investigator, leading the Konermann Lab +1 more
Sector
Nonprofit
Education
Stanford
Work listed
2
Honors
1
Sources cited
3
Profile reviewed

Career

Konermann co-founded the Arc Institute with Patrick Hsu and Patrick Collison, who had earlier collaborated on Fast Grants, and serves as its Executive Director. Arc, founded in 2021, runs a Virtual Cell Initiative and an Alzheimer's Disease Initiative alongside its investigator labs.2

Arc's lab page notes that Konermann's work on CRISPR tools for perturbing the transcriptome was recognized by an appointment as a Chan Zuckerberg Biohub Investigator and as a Hanna Gray Fellow of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. Konermann also holds a faculty appointment in biochemistry at Stanford.1

Research

The Konermann Lab works on CRISPR technologies for transcriptome engineering, building on the Cas13d family of RNA-targeting enzymes, and on CRISPR screening in stem cell-derived models of the human brain. It also develops computational methods for analyzing large perturbation datasets to study the genetics of complex disease risk.1

Many of the lab's recent papers are joint work with the Hsu Lab, including the 2024 Nature paper on bridge RNAs and a 2025 Cell paper proposing the Virtual Cell Challenge as a test for virtual cell models.13

Work and contributions

  • CasRx (RNA-targeting Cas13d) Published research

    First author of the 2018 Cell paper on transcriptome engineering with RNA-targeting type VI-D CRISPR effectors, which identified the engineered Cas13d enzyme known as CasRx.1

  • Bridge RNAs Published research

    Co-author of the 2024 Nature paper showing that bridge RNAs direct programmable recombination of target and donor DNA.3

Timeline

  1. Co-authored a Nature Biotechnology paper on orthogonal gene knockout and activation with Cas9.1
  2. First-authored the Cell paper on transcriptome engineering with RNA-targeting CRISPR effectors.1
  3. Co-founded the Arc Institute with Patrick Hsu and Patrick Collison.2
  4. Co-authored a Cell Systems paper on deep learning and Cas13d ortholog discovery for RNA targeting.1
  5. Co-authored the Nature paper on programmable recombination with bridge RNAs.3
  6. Co-authored the Cell paper introducing the Virtual Cell Challenge.1

Honors and recognition

  • Hanna Gray Fellow · Howard Hughes Medical Institute1

Where they work

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References

3 sources · profile reviewed Oct 21, 2026 · data updated Oct 21, 2026

  1. Konermann Lab — Arc Institute (research focus, publications, team)Arc Institute · Official page · accessed Oct 21, 2026
  2. About — Arc InstituteArc Institute · Official page · accessed Oct 21, 2026
  3. Bridge RNAs direct programmable recombination of target and donor DNA (Nature)Nature · Paper · published Jun 26, 2024 · accessed Oct 21, 2026