Meet with a Cell Press editor
Authors whose abstracts are accepted to the Cell Symposium: Precision genomics for human health, will have the opportunity for one-on-one interactions with our Cell Press editors on the morning of September 17, 2025.
Interested? Book a meeting here.
- Laura Zahn, Editor-in-chief, Cell Genomics, Consulting editor, Cell
Laura is an evolutionary geneticist with a PhD in ecology and evolutionary biology, with a minor in genetics from The University of Arizona, Tucson, USA, whose research was multidisciplinary and focused on how selection and evolution impacts reproduction and development. She joined Cell Press after 15 years as an editor for Science, where she was responsible for papers in genetics and genomics. She is happiest discussing, reading, or hearing about cutting-edge research and methods that delve into how the genome informs upon all life at all levels. Her interests span studies that strive to understand gene function in reproduction, development—from the single cell to organismal level—and disease to how selection and mutation shape populations and species.
Email: lzahn@cell.com
- Rita Gemayel, Senior scientific editor, Current Biology
Rita studied biology at the Lebanese University in Beirut and then pursued graduate work in molecular biology at Louvain University in Belgium. After her postdoctoral work in functional genomics at KULeuven, she started her editorial career at The FEBS Journal and then joined Cell Press as a locum editor at Current Biology in 2018. After four years at Cell Reports, she re-joined her Cell Press alma mater in 2023.
Email: r.gemayel@cell.com
- Emily Marcinkevicius, Senior scientific editor, Cell Reports Methods
Emily trained at Weill Cornell and Columbia University before becoming a scientific editor in 2016. She was an editor first at Developmental Cell and then Nature Genetics, prior to joining Cell Reports Methods to help launch the journal in 2021. Like the rest of her team, Emily is passionate about the work that goes into developing robust, reproducible methods that can spur scientific progress. Though Emily handles content across the life-sciences, she has developed a particular interest in methods and technologies for understanding the genome and how it links to all levels of biological function and human health.
Email: e.marcinkevicius@cell.com