Viviana Risca

Viviana Risca
Born	1982or1983(age 42–43) Bucharest, Romania
Citizenship	United States
Education	Stanford University (BS) University of California, Berkeley (PhD)
Occupations	Geneticist assistant professor
Employer	Rockefeller University
Academic background
Thesis	Actin Filament Branching and Behavior under Mechanical Constraints  (2012)
Doctoral advisor	Daniel A. Fletcher

Viviana Ioana Risca (born 1982 or 1983) is a Romanian-American geneticist who is the assistant professor at and head of the Rockefeller University's Laboratory of Genome Architecture and Dynamics.

Early life and education

Risca was inspired to study molecular biology after reading Steganographia in high school.

Viviana Ioana Risca was born in 1982 or 1983 in Bucharest. She emigrated to the United States in 1992, where she grew up in the suburbs of New York City. As a freshman in high school, Risca co-authored Hiding messages in DNA microdots with Catherine Taylor Cleveland and Carter Bancroft; the article was published in Nature . ^[1]

In 2000, she won the $100,000 first place prize in the Regeneron Science Talent Search for her project "DNA-Based Steganography", in which she encoded a cryptic message in a strand of DNA, with the help of Carter Bancroft. Later that year she was named part of the USA Today All-American Academic Team and graduated from Paul D. Schreiber Senior High School. ^{[2] [3] [4] [5]}

Risca received a Bachelor of Science in physics from Stanford University in 2004 and a PhD in biophysics from the University of California, Berkeley in 2012. ^[5]

Career

Risca became an assistant professor at the Rockefeller University in 2019. She is the head of its Laboratory of Genome Architecture and Dynamics. Her laboratory investigated the structure and mechanisms of chromatin, including how the change of structure of chromatin affects responses to cancer treatments. ^[6]

Awards and honors

• 2000 Regeneron Science Talent Search
• 2007 Paul & Daisy Soros Fellowship for New Americans ^[5]
• 2012 Walter V. and Idun Berry Postdoctoral Fellowship ^[7]

Selected publications

As of 2025, Risca has written and co-written more than 20 papers and articles.

• An improved ATAC-seq protocol reduces background and enables interrogation of frozen tissues ( Nature Methods , 2017)
• Hiding messages in DNA microdots ( Nature , 1996)

References

1. "Hiding Messages in DNA microdots". Google Scholar . Retrieved 2025-06-30.
2. Tapellini, Donna (March 16, 2000). "Teen Science Is Serious Business". Wired . ISSN   1059-1028 . Retrieved 2025-06-30.
3. "Young scientists win big in Intel competition". New Haven Register . March 16, 2000. Retrieved June 30, 2025.
4. Holloway, Lynette (2000-01-25). "Search for Science Talent Homes In on Long Island". The New York Times . ISSN   0362-4331. Archived from the original on May 27, 2015. Retrieved 2025-06-30.
5. "Viviana Risca". The Paul & Daisy Soros Fellowships for New Americans . Retrieved 2025-06-30.
6. "Viviana I. Risca". Rockefeller University . Retrieved 2025-06-30.
7. "Viviana Risca | Office of Postdoctoral Affairs". postdocs.stanford.edu. Retrieved 2025-06-30.