Dr. Meredith Sommars is an Assistant Professor of Biological and Health Sciences at Wheaton College, where she leads the Sommars Lab and teaches courses in genetics, genomics, and molecular biology. 

Her research focuses on understanding how transcription factor proteins regulate gene expression — essentially, how cells decide which genes to turn on and which to silence. She is particularly interested in how these regulatory programs control metabolism and what happens when they break down, with implications for conditions like obesity, liver disease, and muscle health. Her work integrates molecular and cellular techniques with cutting-edge bioinformatics approaches to answer these questions at a genomic scale. 

Dr. Sommars earned her B.S. in Biology, with Distinction, from Duke University, before completing a dual graduate degree at Northwestern University, where she received both a Ph.D. in Molecular Biology and a Master of Public Health with a focus in Epidemiology. Her doctoral and postdoctoral research at Northwestern's Feinberg School of Medicine produced publications in leading journals including Nature Metabolism, eLife, Cell Reports, and PLOS Biology. 

Beyond the bench, Dr. Sommars is deeply committed to undergraduate education and mentorship. She believes that every student — regardless of experience level — is capable of doing meaningful science, and she works to create a lab environment that is rigorous, curious, and genuinely supportive.