Theresa Oei

Theresa Oei is an American biomedical researcher and former National Football League cheerleader. Oei received regional and national media coverage in 2016 and 2017 for working in gene-editing research at the Broad Institute while also serving as a rookie cheerleader for the New England Patriots.

Early life and education Oei is from Hebron, Connecticut. A minor planet, 22784 Theresaoei, was later named for her; the naming citation identifies her as Theresa A. Oei, born in 1993, a finalist in the 2006 Discovery Channel Young Scientist Challenge who attended the Oei Home School in Hebron, Connecticut. The asteroid, provisionally designated 1999 JM43, is a main-belt asteroid discovered by the Lincoln Near-Earth Asteroid Research program.

In high school, Oei attended East Catholic High School in Manchester, Connecticut. In 2008, the Connecticut Academy of Science and Engineering listed her as the Connecticut Science Fair first-place winner in the senior division for physical sciences for a project titled "Use of Seashells to Detoxify Lead-Contaminated Effluent and Groundwater". The National Museum of Education later described her lead-removal project as an inexpensive filter using crushed seashells as the filtering medium. In 2011, the U.S. Department of Education listed Oei as one of Connecticut's U.S. Presidential Scholars. Yale College Arts records also list her participation in dance and performance productions as a choreographer, director, producer, and performer between 2012 and 2015. In 2015, Oei was elected into the Wolf's Head Society.

Scientific career

Yale and Broad Institute As an undergraduate at Yale, Oei co-authored a 2015 Journal of Virology article on microRNAs encoded by Herpesvirus saimiri.

After graduating from Yale, Oei worked at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard. CBS Boston reported in 2017 that she was studying gene-editing techniques at the Broad Institute, where her team used gene-editing research to better understand genetic diseases and cancer. Her doctoral work focused on canonical Polycomb Repressive Complex 1 condensation and epigenetic regulation. In 2020, the Karin Grunebaum Cancer Research Foundation listed Oei, then a third-year graduate student in chemical biology in the Kingston Lab, for a project titled "Understanding Polycomb Phase Separation in Neuroblastoma Epigenetics".

New England Patriots cheerleading Oei became a rookie member of the New England Patriots cheerleading squad in 2016. CBS Boston profiled her in January 2017 in a segment on her work in gene editing and cheerleading, noting that she was then applying to graduate school. The Glastonbury Citizen reported that she cheered during the Patriots' 2016 season, including the team's run to Super Bowl LI in Houston, where New England defeated the Atlanta Falcons.

Oei also described the public-facing role as a way to encourage young students, especially girls, to see science as accessible and compatible with other pursuits.

Selected publications

Awards and honors

Finalist, 2006 Discovery Channel Young Scientist Challenge

Connecticut Science Fair first place, physical sciences, senior division, 2008

U.S. Presidential Scholar, 2011

Namesake of 22784 Theresaoei