I’m a systems thinker and love operating at the intersection of scientific disciplines – I enjoy creating and analyzing high-throughput and novel dataset types, while keeping key biological questions in focus. I finished my PhD through the Harvard-MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology (HST) in 2023 and am currently a scientist at Digital Biology.

My core expertise is in high-throughput functional genomic screening (experiments and analysis), fluorescence imaging and image analysis (Python, GCP, Snakemake), innate immunity (IRF3, STING), and spatial biology methods (Optical Pooled Screening and Light-Seq). However, I love branching out into new scientific areas and aim to learn whatever skills needed for the biological question at hand.

During my PhD, I was co-advised by Paul Blainey (MIT Biological Engineering) and Nir Hacohen (Harvard Immunology). Together with Bingxu Liu, I discovered a new role for the innate immune sensor STING as a proton channel (Liu*, Carlson* et al. Science 2023, MIT news story here). I also helped develop a technology called Optical Pooled Screening, which I then applied to study innate immune pathways including IRF3 translocation (Carlson et al. PNAS 2023), Ebola infection (co-first author manuscript in preparation) and STING trafficking (co-first author manuscript in preparation).

In my free time, I love to watch women’s artistic gymnastics, practice powerlifting, cycle (I did my first century ride in 2023), and read science fiction.

Feel free to reach out at beccajcarlson@gmail.com.