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Educational Session Keynote Speaker |
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J. Raymond DePaulo, Jr., M.D.
Dr. J. Raymond DePaulo was founder and director of the Affective Disorders Clinic (now called the Mood Disorder Clinic) from 1977 until he became department chairman in 2002. As a faculty member in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences for the past 34 years, Dr. DePaulo has been a clinician, teacher, and researcher whose primary area of research has been the genetics of bipolar disorder and unipolar depression. He has devoted his career to finding the causes and new treatments for these conditions. Dr. DePaulo remains an active and sought-after clinician, teacher, and mentor. He is the Henry Phipps Professor and Director of the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, The Johns Hopkins University of School of Medicine and Psychiatrist-in-Chief, The Johns Hopkins Hospital.
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Plenary Speakers |
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 Aravinda Chakravarti, Ph.D.
Dr. Aravinda Chakravarti is Director, Center for Complex Disease Genomics and Professor of Medicine, Pediatrics, Molecular Biology & Genetics, and, Biostatistics at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and the Bloomberg School of Public Health. He is the 2008 President of the American Society of Human Genetics, a member of the U.S. National Academy's Institute of Medicine and an Honorary Fellow of the Indian Academy of Sciences. Dr. Chakravarti has been a key participant and architect of the Human Genome, HapMap and 1000 Genomes project. His research is aimed at genome-scale analysis of humans and computational analysis of gene variation and function to understand the molecular genetic basis of human disease. Dr. Chakravarti received his doctorate of philosophy degree in human genetics from the University of Texas Health Science Center in Houston in 1979 and continued postdoctoral training at the University of Washington in Seattle during 1979-80. He started his faculty career at the University of Pittsburgh (1980 – 1993), was the James H. Jewell Professor of Genetics at Case Western Reserve University (1994-2000), and the inaugural Director and Henry J. Knott Professor of the McKusick-Nathans Institute of Genetic Medicine at Johns Hopkins University (2000-2007). Dr. Chakravarti is currently the founding Director of the Center for Complex Disease Genomics at Johns Hopkins. He also is one of the founding Editors-in-Chief of Genome Research and Annual Reviews of Genomics & Human Genetics, and serves on the Advisory and Editorial Boards of numerous international journals, boards, academic societies, the U.S. National Institutes of Health and biotechnology companies.
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 David Goldman, M.D.
Dr. David Goldman earned his bachelor of science degree from Yale University in 1974, his doctor of medicine degree in 1978, and completed residency training in psychiatry in 1979, both at the University of Texas Medical Branch. Dr. Goldman joined the NIAAA in 1979 and has been Chief of the Laboratory of Neurogenetics since 1991. Throughout his career, Dr. Goldman has focused on the identification of genetic factors responsible for inherited differences in behavior, and he has authored over 300 papers. His laboratory is currently exploring the genetics of alcoholism and related psychiatric diseases, and is well-known for his work identifying effects of functional genetic variants on intermediate phenotypes for complex behavioral diseases.
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Seth Grant, Ph.D.
Professor Seth Grant is best known for his work using mouse genetics and synapse proteomics to study synaptic function, plasticity, behavior and disease. His mouse and human genetic work has identified key signaling molecules, pathways and multiprotein complexes that control simple adaptive behaviors and cognitive functions including learning, memory and strategy utilization. Professor Grant's work on synapse proteomics has uncovered high molecular complexity in synapse protein complexes and the postsynaptic density providing avenues to study synapse evolution and brain disease. Evolutionary studies have introduced the concept of the protosynapse as the ancestral machinery for adaptive behavior originating in unicellular organisms before the origins of neurons. Protosynapse synapse proteins are a conserved core set of synapse proteins and with an increase in complexity with the evolution of multicellular organisms gave rise to synaptic and behavioral diversity that characterizes vertebrates. The recent analysis of the human postsynaptic density identified its involvement in over 100 brain diseases. Professor Grant currently directs the Genes to Cognition Programme that studies the role of synaptic proteins in diseases, and with collaborators he is studying the involvement of these proteins in psychiatric diseases. He received degrees in physiology, medicine and surgery from the University of Sydney and postdoctoral training at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory and with Eric Kandel (Nobel Laureate 2000) at Columbia University. Professor Grant is a principal scientist at the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute in Cambridge, United Kingdom, Professor of Molecular Neuroscience at Edinburgh and Cambridge Universities, and Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh.
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Thomas R. Insel, M.D.
Dr. Thomas Insel is Director of the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), the component of the National Institutes of Health charged with generating the knowledge needed to understand, treat, and prevent mental disorders. His tenure at NIMH has been distinguished by groundbreaking findings in the areas of practical clinical trials, autism research, and the role of genetics in mental illnesses. Prior to his appointment as NIMH Director in the Fall 2002, Dr. Insel was Professor of Psychiatry at Emory University. There, he was Founding Director of the Center for Behavioral Neuroscience, one of the largest science and technology centers funded by the National Science Foundation and, concurrently, Director of an NIH-funded Center for Autism Research. From 1994 to 1999, he was Director of the Yerkes Regional Primate Research Center in Atlanta. While at Emory, Dr. Insel continued the line of research he had initiated at NIMH studying the neurobiology of complex social behaviors. He has published over 250 scientific articles and four books, including the Neurobiology of Parental Care (with Michael Numan) in 2003. Dr. Insel has served on numerous academic, scientific, and professional committees and boards. He is a member of the Institute of Medicine, a fellow of the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology, and is a recipient of several awards, including the Outstanding Service Award from the U.S. Public Health Service and the 2010 La Fondation IPSEN Neuronal Plasticity Prize. Dr. Insel graduated from the combined B.A.-M.D. program at Boston University in 1974. He did his internship at Berkshire Medical Center, Pittsfield, Massachusetts, and his residency at the Langley Porter Neuropsychiatric Institute at the University of California, San Francisco.
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Nicholas Katsanis, Ph.D.
Professor Nicholas Katsanis obtained his bachelor of science degree in genetics from University College of London in 1993, and his doctorate degree from Imperial College, University of London in 1997. He then joined the laboratory of Dr. Lupski at Baylor College of Medicine, where he initiated his studies on Bardet-Biedl syndrome. In 2002, Professor Katsanis relocated to the Institute of Genetic Medicine, Johns Hopkins University. In 2009, he moved to Duke University to become a Distinguished Brumley Professor and to establish the Center for Human Disease Modeling, where he is the Director; this new structure aims to facilitate collaboration across disciplines and to develop physiologically relevant tools to study variation found in human patient genomes. In parallel, the Katsanis lab pursues questions centered on the signaling roles of vertebrate cilia, the translation of signaling pathway defects on the causality of ciliary disorders, and the dissection of second-site modification phenomena as a consequece of genetic load in a functional system.
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Suzanne M. Leal, Ph.D., M.S.
Professor Suzanne Leal is currently a Professor in the Department of Molecular and Human Genetics and Director of the Center for Statistical Genetics at Baylor College of Medicine. She received a master of science degree in biostatistics in 1989 and a doctor of philosophy degree in epidemiology in 1994 from Columbia University. Professor Leal's interest in genetic epidemiology lies in the mapping of complex and Mendelian traits and the application of next generation sequencing technologies to identify disease susceptibility genes. The emphasis in her methodological research in recent years has been developing methods to detect rare variant associations for complex traits. Professor Leal also teaches and organizes courses on statistical genetics in the United States and internationally.
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Thomas Lehner, Ph.D., M.P.H.
Dr. Thomas Lehner is the Director of the Office for Genomics Research Coordination and Branch Chief of the Genomics Research Branch at the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), National Institutes of Health (NIH) and is responsible for the genetics portfolio for the Institute. He is an advisor to the NIMH Director and the NIMH Scientific Director, for issues related to genetics and genomics and has led the development of several large initiatives that have greatly increased the Institute's profile in genomics research. Before joining the NIH in 2004 Dr. Lehner accrued a wide array of experience in the public sector, notably as an Infectious Disease Epidemiologist for the City of New York; in the private sector as Director of Science and Research for a Millennium Pharmaceuticals' subsidiary; and in academia as a Senior Research Associate at The Rockefeller University. A native of Vienna, Austria, he received a doctorate of philosophy degree in genetics from the University of Vienna and a Masters in Public Health degree in epidemiology from Columbia University.
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