Dr Lars Velten is a molecular and computational biologist who develops functional genomic technologies to study blood stem cell biology, blood ageing, and leukemia. His research investigates how hematopoietic stem cells regulate self-renewal and differentiation, and how alterations in stem cell function cause disease. His group recently developed EPI-Clone, a method that uses naturally occurring changes in DNA methylation to trace stem cell clones in unmanipulated human tissues. This work revealed extensive, previously hidden clonal expansions in ageing blood. His laboratory also uses large-scale functional genomic screens to uncover principles by which regulatory DNA and gene regulatory networks control cell-state-specific gene expression in blood stem cells. Earlier in his career, he used single-cell RNA sequencing to challenge the prevailing model of human blood stem cell differentiation.

Dr Velten is a group leader at the Centre for Genomic Regulation (CRG) in Barcelona, Spain. He studied molecular cell biology and cancer biology at Heidelberg University and the German Cancer Research Center and completed his PhD, summa cum laude, at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) under the supervision of Lars Steinmetz. After serving as a research staff scientist at EMBL, he established his group at the CRG in 2020. He received the Otto Schmeil Award for his doctoral work, is an EMBO Young Investigator, and holds an ERC Starting Grant.

Velten Lab