Dr. Pavan received his B.S. degree from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst in 1985. He received his Ph.D. degree from the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in 1991 where he developed technologies for the manipulation of yeast artificial chromosomes. From 1991 to 1994, Dr. Pavan did a postdoctoral fellowship at Princeton University with Shirley M. Tilghman, during which time he became interested in the developmental genetics of the neural crest-derived melanocytes. Dr. Pavan joined the NHGRI in 1994 and became a Senior Investigator in 2000. His laboratory is engaged in functional genomic analysis of neural crest development and its implications for related diseases.