Dr. Ott is an expert in mechanisms of gene expression and chemical biology. He is an Assistant Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School, and a Principal Investigator in the Krantz Family Center for Cancer Research in the Mass General Brigham Cancer Institute. The principal focus of his research is to determine mechanisms of malfunctioning gene regulation and epigenomes in cancer, and to develop therapeutic strategies to modulate gene control factors in tumors. He has a broad background in molecular genetics and epigenetic mechanisms of gene regulation. During graduate school at Northwestern University, he led a team that first resolved the complete gene regulatory structure and enhancer architecture of the CFTR locus, the causal gene of cystic fibrosis. As apostdoctoral fellow at the Dana-Farber Cancer Center and Harvard Medical School, he led efforts to develop the first generation of bromodomain inhibitors as a potential treatment for lymphoid malignancies including acute leukemia and chronic lymphocytic leukemia. Through these efforts he developed expertise in high resolution epigenomics assays, computational analysis of tumorepigenomes and gene regulatory networks, and epigenome-targeting therapeutics development. In his independent laboratory at the Massachusetts General Hospital, his team described the complex epigenomic signatures that characterize chronic lymphocytic leukemia and were the first to describe novel chemical degraders of the enhancer acetyltransferases CBP and p300 active in lymphoma and myeloma. His team is currently made up of 6 postdoctoral fellows, 2 technicians, and a lab manager. His team continues to develop epigenomic and chemical methods to modulate gene regulatory targets and deploy large-scale chemical epigenomics screens to identify new cancer drug targets. He lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts with his wife Maya, son Jude (8), and daughter Hero (4).