Dr. Rosen did his undergraduate work at Cornell University and received an MD and a Ph.D in Cellular and Molecular Biology from the University of Michigan. He then moved to Boston for a residency in Internal Medicine at the Brigham and Women’s Hospital, and a fellowship in Endocrinology and Metabolism at Massachusetts General Hospital. After completing a post-doctoral fellowship with Bruce Spiegelman at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute he started his own research group at the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, where he is now Chief of the Division of Endocrinology, Diabetes, and Metabolism, and Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School. He is also an Institute Member of the Broad Institute of Harvard and MIT. Dr. Rosen’s lab works on molecular mechanisms related to obesity, adipocyte development, and the molecular basis of insulin sensitivity, with particular emphasis on transcriptional and epigenomic events that affect metabolic health. In addition to his research activities, Dr. Rosen is a practicing endocrinologist.
White adipose tissue is a critical regulator of normal metabolic physiology and is involved in many aspects of pathophysiology. Because adipocytes are large and fragile, they have resisted attempts at single cell sequencing. We have used single nucleus RNA sequencing (sNuc-seq) to characterize human white adipose tissue across multiple axes, including sex, depot, and body weight, and have uncovered a wealth of cell types, including several novel subtypes of adipocytes. We have demonstrated the utility of these data through cross-species comparisons, association with human disease traits, and prediction of novel signaling pathways within the adipose niche.