Pei-Hsuan Wu studied biology in Boston University in the U.S. Following her undergraduate training, she investigated transcriptional regulation of gene expression in mammalian metabolism as a research technician in Bruce Spiegelman’s laboratory at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Harvard Medical School in Boston. She conducted her Ph.D. research with Richard Carthew at Northwestern University in Evanston. Her dissertation shed light on small RNA-mediated gene silencing using fly genetics and in vitro biochemical assays.

In 2013, she received her Ph.D. degree and joined Phillip Zamore’s laboratory at the RNA Therapeutics Institute at the University of Massachusetts Medical School on the east coast of the U.S. From 2013 to 2021, as a postdoctoral associate and, later, an instructor, she probed the mechanism of germline small RNAs called PIWI-interacting RNAs (piRNAs) using mice as a model. Using CRISPR/Cas9-mediated genome editing and sequencing, her work provided direct proof for the indispensable role of piRNAs in male fertility and sperm function. Supported by PRIMA from the Swiss National Science Foundation, she joined the Department of Genetic Medicine and Development (GEDEV) at UNIGE to build her research group as an assistant professor in 2022. At GEDEV, her laboratory will investigate epigenetic paternal contribution to embryo development via small RNAs using mouse models, high-throughput sequencing, and embryo manipulation.