Dr. Jongens received his Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley in 1989. He did his postdoctoral work with Dr. Yuh Nung Jan at the University of California, San Francisco. In 1994 he started in the Genetics Department at the University of Pennsylvania, School of Medicine where he is currently an Associate Professor. Dr. Jongens research has primarily used Drosophila to study questions ranging from the developmental regulation of gene expression, to the genetics of cell type specification, to his current research focus on the study of cognitive and behavioral disorders in humans utilizing Drosophila models. His lab has developed Drosophila models to study Fragile X Mental Retardation, other Autism Associated Disorders, and Alzheimer's disease. His lab is using these models to investigate the underlying defects that lead to relevant, behavioral, cognitive and developmental phenotypes. The goals of his research are to gain insight into the underlying causes of the respective disease symptoms as an approach to develop therapeutic strategies to treat these disease, as well as to learn more about the basic mechanistic pathways that are required for normal learning, memory and behavior.