SiberDrac/Will Towler, PhD

PhD, Cellular and Molecular Biology, University of Pennsylvania (2019); BS, Biology, Furman University (2011)

Will earned his PhD from the University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine in 2019 after defending his dissertation on skeletal malformation in the rare human genetic disease, fibrodysplasia ossificans progressiva (FOP). He has published several first author papers and contributed to multiple case reports on the subject. Most recently (2021, Dev Dyn), Will published a review linking human and mouse model data to better understand the role of the mutated gene responsible for FOP in skeletal development. He has presented orally at multiple in-house symposia, and presented posters at international conferences including ASBMR (2017, 2020) and the Gordon Research Conference on Bones and Teeth (2018).

Will is a dedicated developmental biologist with a keen interest in the twin field of regenerative biology – that is, why don’t we as humans regenerate? And how would we “know” what shapes to make, the way other regenerating organisms do? He believes we have the genetic tools to think anew about what “life on Earth” really looks like.