Arpita Kulkarni, PhD

Introducing Dr. Arpita Kulkarni, Co-Director of the Functional Genomics and Bioinformatics Core at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and Harvard Medical School, and an affiliate of the Broad Institute. Arpita is a cell and developmental biologist with deep expertise in functional genomics, single-cell and spatial omics, and next-generation and long-read sequencing technologies. Her work currently sits at the intersection of single-cell biology, computation, and innovation, with a future focus on enabling AI-driven discovery at scale across both traditional and emerging model species.

Prior to BIDMC, Arpita served as Associate Director of the Single Cell Core at Harvard Medical School, where she led strategy, platform development, and scientific engagement for a broad community of academic, industry, and international researchers. She played a key role in scaling operations, onboarding emerging technologies, and expanding access to cutting-edge genomics infrastructure across Harvard and beyond. Her collaborative portfolio includes multi-institutional projects supported by the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative (CZI) and Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI), as well as partnerships with faculty and biotech innovators. Her translational research has contributed to the preclinical development of multiple therapeutic candidates in oncology, neuropsychiatry, and neurodegenerative disease, including therapeutics that have progressed toward commercialization.

Arpita is also recognized for advancing single-cell and spatial genomics in non-model systems, having helped establish customized workflows in more than two dozen emerging model organisms—contributing to a growing framework for biodiversity cell atlasing globally. Through this work, she applies a biodiversity mining approach to unlock novel biological insights and identify potential breakthroughs in medicine and technology. While traditional model organisms remain foundational to biomedical research, she advocates for expanding the scope of inquiry to include underrepresented species—pushing the boundaries of conventional research frameworks to drive innovation and address unmet clinical needs.

A dedicated educator and mentor, Arpita develops and teaches training programs in single-cell and functional genomics through the Harvard Chan Bioinformatics Core and has mentored early-career researchers—including recipients of national honors such as the Regeneron Science Talent Search.

Her work has been recognized with several prestigious awards, including the HMS Foundry Award (2024), the Mass General Brigham Innovation Discovery Grant (2022), and contributions to a project that received the BRIght Futures Prize (2022). She was also named one of six global awardees of the MassBio & SCBio Therapeutics Accelerator (2024).

Arpita earned her PhD from the Max Planck Institute for Biology and completed two postdoctoral fellowships – the first at Harvard University and the second at Harvard Medical School.