Sara Zaccara, PhD, is an RNA biologist and Assistant Professor of Systems Biology at Columbia University Irving Medical Center.

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Her laboratory studies how post-transcriptional regulation is encoded at the level of individual RNA modifications and individual amino acids within RNA-binding proteins. By combining quantitative epitranscriptomics, functional genomics, and mechanistic biology, her group investigates how these molecular features control RNA fate, protein function, and cell state, and how their regulation is altered in hematologic disease.

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During her postdoctoral training with Samie Jaffrey at Weill Cornell Medicine, Zaccara helped redefine the understanding of N⁶-methyladenosine (m⁶A) regulation, including establishing a unified model for how YTHDF proteins control m⁶A-modified mRNAs. She launched her independent laboratory at Columbia in 2022, where her group is developing new approaches to uncover how RNA modifications, RNA-binding proteins, and their interaction networks control cell state in normal and malignant hematopoiesis.

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Zaccara is a recipient of the NIH Director’s New Innovator Award and was named a STAT Wunderkind for her contributions to RNA biology.