Postdoctoral Researcher

University of Southern California

Los Angeles, CA, USA

Posted 8/6/2026

The Crump Lab at the University of Southern California’s Department of Stem Cell Biology and Regenerative Medicine (https://crumplab.usc.edu/) is seeking creative postdoctoral researchers to study the development and regeneration of the vertebrate head.

We are interested in how positional information is integrated at the gene regulatory level to specify diverse skeletal and connective tissue fates from the cranial neural crest. We also study how the correct tissue types can be precisely regenerated after injury and how this process contrasts with how these tissues develop. While we primarily use zebrafish, we are increasingly performing comparative studies across vertebrate models.

We have several new R01 grants to broadly study the following questions:

1. How do enhancers encode for regional and cell type identity in the developing head? We are using comparative multiomics, machine learning, and high-throughput enhancer testing in zebrafish to decode the grammar of vertebrate developmental enhancers.

2. What is the structure of developmental lineage relationships and how does lineage plasticity underlie the remarkable regenerative abilities of zebrafish? We have developed a barcoding approach that can be read out by spatial transcriptomics to perform in toto lineage recording in developing and regenerating zebrafish.

Interested applicants should contact Gage Crump at [email protected]. USC provides generous postdoctoral salaries and benefits and a stimulating and highly collaborative environment to study developmental and stem cell biology.

Last Updated 08/06/2026