Christopher A. Walsh, MD, PhD
Harvard University
Profile
About the Speaker: Dr. Christopher A. Walsh is Chief of Genetics and Genomics and an Investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute at Boston Children’s Hospital, and Bullard Professor of Pediatrics and Neurology at Harvard Medical School. He completed his PhD and MD at The University of Chicago and neurology residency at Massachusetts General Hospital. After postdoctoral training with Constance Cepko in the Department of Genetics at Harvard, in 1993 he became Assistant Professor of Neurology at Beth Israel-Deaconess Medical Center, becoming the Bullard Professor in 1999. He moved to Boston Children’s Hospital in 2006.
Dr. Walsh’s research uses genetics to understand the development and function of the human cerebral cortex. His lab has identified dozens of neurological disease genes that affect the developing brain, resulting in epilepsy, intellectual disability, autism spectrum disorders, and other conditions. Recent work has revealed clonal mutations that occur during development—present in some cells but not all cells–as important causes of human epilepsy, autism, and schizophrenia. His lab developed new technologies revealing that any given human neuron has hundreds to thousands of mutations relative to the neuron next to it, increasing with age–despite the fact that neurons do not undergo cell division—and accumulating faster in age-related diseases associated with degeneration and dementia. He is an elected member of the National Academy of Medicine, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the National Academy of Sciences. He shared the Gruber Neuroscience Prize in 2021, and the Kavli Neuroscience Prize in 2022.
About the Harry A. Waisman Memorial Lecture: Waisman joined the University of Wisconsin faculty in 1952 as an associate professor of pediatrics and was promoted to professor in 1958. He became director of the Joseph P. Kennedy, Jr. Memorial Laboratories for research in developmental disabilities in 1963. The laboratories grew from an initial grant from the family of President John F. Kennedy, which Waisman was largely instrumental in obtaining.
>>Read more about Harry Waisman and view a list of previous lectures
For Further Information, Contact: Clark Kellogg at kellogg@waisman.wisc.edu
The seminar series is funded by the John D. Wiley Conference Center Fund, the Friends of the Waisman Center and Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) grant P50HD105353.
