Constance Cepko, PhD is Bullard Professor of Genetics and Neuroscience at Harvard Medical School and a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator. The Cepko lab investigates why photoreceptor cells die in the many forms of retinal degeneration, and seeks to develop a gene therapy that prevents their death and the subsequent loss of vision.

Dr. Cepko received her PhD degree from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, working with Phillip Sharp on adenovirus capsid assembly, and remained at MIT as a postdoctoral fellow in the laboratory of Richard Mulligan, where she was involved in the development of retrovirus-mediated gene transduction. She moved to Harvard Medical School as a faculty member to join the newly formed Department of Genetics in 1985.