Kip Lacy, Ph.D.

Kip Lacy is a Postdoctoral Research Scientist in Andrés Bendesky’s laboratory at the Zuckerman Mind Brain Behavior Institute at Columbia University. He holds a Ph.D. in biosciences from Rockefeller University and a B.S. in ecology and an M.S. in entomology from the University of Georgia.

Lacy’s research explores unusual exceptions to the typically “fair” rules of genetic inheritance and gene expression. In most cases, genes from each parent are inherited and expressed equally. During his doctoral studies with Daniel Kronauer, Lacy discovered a striking exception in an asexual ant species: a reproductive system in which a form of unfair inheritance ensures that daughter ants are genetically identical to their mothers. For this work, he received the W.D. Hamilton Award from the Society for the Study of Evolution.

At Columbia, Lacy studies genomic imprinting, a process in humans and other mammals in which only one of the two parental copies of a gene is active. Genomic imprinting plays an important role in fetal development, placental biology, and adult health. By combining evolutionary genomics with laboratory epigenetics, Lacy aims to uncover how evolutionary forces shape genomic imprinting and influence healthy development.