Marissa Co is a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Molecular and Medical Genetics and the Vollum Institute at Oregon Health & Science University. She received a B.S. in Neuroscience from the University of Texas at Dallas and a Ph.D. in neuroscience from the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center. She aims to elucidate the molecular and cellular mechanisms underlying heterogeneity in autism, focusing on transcriptional regulators and their downstream targets.

During her doctoral studies, Co dissected the contributions of FOXP transcription factors to brain development and behavior in rodent and avian model systems. As a postdoctoral fellow,
she generated a comprehensive genetic toolkit to study genotype-phenotype relationships in TBR1 syndrome, identifying distinct mechanisms across clinical variant subtypes. She plans to leverage these tools to discover protein complexes, biochemical pathways and gene dosage principles underlying brain and behavior changes in autism.

Co has received recognition for her work from the Autism Science Foundation, Collins Medical Trust, the Medical Research Foundation of Oregon, Spectrum 40 under 40 and the Grass Foundation.