{"id":2513,"date":"2026-09-15T14:41:23","date_gmt":"2026-09-15T18:41:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/scienceweb.clemson.edu\/ihg\/?p=2513"},"modified":"2026-09-16T10:20:47","modified_gmt":"2026-09-16T14:20:47","slug":"dr-carlos-fernando-buen-abad-najar","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/scienceweb.clemson.edu\/ihg\/dr-carlos-fernando-buen-abad-najar\/","title":{"rendered":"Dr. Carlos Fernando Buen Abad Najar"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Headshot

Dr. Carlos Fernando Buen Abad Najar<\/p><\/div>\n

Dr. Carlos Fernando Buen Abad Najar<\/strong><\/p>\n

Assistant Professor, Department of Genetics and Biochemistry<\/strong><\/p>\n

Email: cbuenab@clemson.edu<\/strong><\/p>\n

Biosketch<\/strong><\/p>\n

Dr. Buen Abad completed his Bachelor\u2019s degree in Biology at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) in 2015. He then earned his Ph.D. in Computational Biology at the University of California, Berkeley in 2021, where he developed new methods for studying RNA splicing in single cells at Dr. Liana Lareau\u2019s and Dr. Nir Yosef\u2019s labs. He continued his scientific research as a postdoctoral scholar in the labs of Dr. Yang Li and Dr. Matthew Stephens at the University of Chicago, where he led research on the genetic and regulatory impact of alternative splicing on gene expression and developed reference-free methods to integrate large-scale data for studying RNA regulation. Dr. Buen Abad joined the Department of Genetics and Biochemistry and the Institute for Human Genetics at Clemson University as an Assistant Professor in 2026.<\/p>\n

Research<\/strong><\/p>\n

Post-transcriptional RNA processing plays a crucial role in shaping the transcriptome and in linking genetic variants with disease, but our understanding of its regulatory roles remains limited. Our previous research demonstrated that RNA regulation, such as alternative splicing coupled with nonsense-mediated decay, intron retention, and alternative polyadenylation, has a global impact on gene expression levels and drives complex traits. The Buen Abad lab develops interpretable, reference-free computational methods that integrate population-level multi-omics and single-cell data to uncover the genetic and molecular RNA regulatory mechanisms that shape the transcriptome and its impact on gene expression, with a focus on decoding the RNA regulatory mechanisms that drive neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer\u2019s and ALS.<\/p>\n

Selected Publications<\/strong><\/p>\n