Dr. Wells invetigates the cell-intrinsic mechanisms that the immune system uses to decode extracellular signals and translate these into the appropriate immune vs. tolerant responses. His lab has defined a series of intracellular proteins that sense signals from costimulatory and growth factor receptors and translate them into transcriptional responses.

In particular, Dr. Wells and his team study how transcription factors establish immunoregulatory gene expression programs in T cells through cooperation with chromatin remodeling and DNA methylation complexes. Supporting their expertise in this area is two decades of experience in cellular immunology, cell biology, and molecular biology research, including mouse models, in vivo and in vitro human and mouse lymphocyte function, biochemistry, transcriptional biology, and epigenetics.

Dr. Wells has incorporated into his research efforts approaches like ChIP-seq, ATAC-seq, 4C-seq and Capture-C to study genome-wide transcription factor occupancy, histone modification, and long-range interactions between enhancers and promoters. These approaches take advantage of deep sequencing resources and the bioinformatic expertise needed to analyze the genome-scale data sets for the Spatial and Functional Genomics Research Affinity Group, for which he serves as co-director.

BA, Miami University (Microbiology), 1991

PhD, University of Wisconsin-Madison (Medical Microbiology and Immunology), 1996

Director, Center for Spatial and Functional Genomics

Associate Professor of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine

American Association of Immunologists, 2002-

American Society of Transplantation, 2002-

American Society of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, 2007-

Basic Science Investigator Award, American Society of Transplantation, 2012