Michael Segel is an assistant professor at Harvard University. He received his A.B. from Harvard College in human developmental and regenerative biology and his Ph.D. in clinical neuroscience from the University of Cambridge. For his doctoral thesis in the lab of Robin Franklin, he explored the molecular mechanisms underpinning the aging of glia in the central nervous system.

For his postdoctoral training, Segel joined the lab of Feng Zhang to develop novel delivery vectors for gene therapy. In this work, he has explored numerous retroviral-like proteins that are embedded within animal genomes and are capable of being retooled as efficient and flexible RNA delivery vectors to various neuronal cells. Ultimately, Segel hopes to leverage these endogenous gene delivery vectors to enable genome engineering in the central nervous system and reverse some of the causative mutations underpinning autism spectrum disorder.