The Cohen lab is delighted to welcome Dr. Kristin Murphy as a new leader in our contraceptive development team. Kristin grew up in northern California, and then moved with her family to Delaware for high school, where she stayed and attended the University of Delaware for college. She completed her B.S. in biological sciences, with interests in ecology and genetics. After experiences in both entomology and molecular biology labs, she ultimately gravitated towards genetics graduate programs. Kristin received her PhD from Cornell University in 2012, where she studied the roles of transcriptional repressors in mammalian embryogenesis with Dr. Maria Garcia-Garcia. She pursued a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Utah Center for Reproductive Medicine where she investigated transgenerational epigenetic inheritance through the paternal germline, and also shadowed the clinical team helping patients overcome infertility with treatments such as in vitro fertilization. Kristin loved the science behind reproductive biology and seeing the medical benefits to scientific discovery firsthand, but was more intrigued by molecular mechanism than clinical care. Kristin went on as a staff scientist to study transcriptional regulation of breast cancer metabolism at the Huntsman Cancer Institute, followed by epigenetic mechanisms of erythroid differentiation at the University of Rochester with Dr. Laurie Steiner, gaining expertise in new genomic technologies and bioinformatic analyses along the way. In 2025, Kristin returned to Ithaca and Cornell University as a senior research associate, and returned to reproductive biology research. Her new project will focus on gametogenesis, with the goal of identifying targets for female contraception.

The Cohen lab is delighted to welcome Dr. Kristin Murphy as a new leader in our contraceptive development team. Kristin grew up in northern California, and then moved with her family to Delaware for high school, where she stayed and attended the University of Delaware for college. She completed her B.S. in biological sciences, with interests in ecology and genetics. After experiences in both entomology and molecular biology labs, she ultimately gravitated towards genetics graduate programs. Kristin received her PhD from Cornell University in 2012, where she studied the roles of transcriptional repressors in mammalian embryogenesis with Dr. Maria Garcia-Garcia. She pursued a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Utah Center for Reproductive Medicine where she investigated transgenerational epigenetic inheritance through the paternal germline, and also shadowed the clinical team helping patients overcome infertility with treatments such as in vitro fertilization. Kristin loved the science behind reproductive biology and seeing the medical benefits to scientific discovery firsthand, but was more intrigued by molecular mechanism than clinical care. Kristin went on as a staff scientist to study transcriptional regulation of breast cancer metabolism at the Huntsman Cancer Institute, followed by epigenetic mechanisms of erythroid differentiation at the University of Rochester with Dr. Laurie Steiner, gaining expertise in new genomic technologies and bioinformatic analyses along the way. In 2025, Kristin returned to Ithaca and Cornell University as a senior research associate, and returned to reproductive biology research. Her new project will focus on gametogenesis, with the goal of identifying targets for female contraception.