Hosted by the Safadi Program of Excellence in Clinical and Translational Neuroscience The University of Chicago 

"One Brain, Many Genomes: Somatic Mutation and Genomic Diversity in The Human Brain, From Development to Degeneration"

Christopher A. Walsh, MD, PhD
Bullard Professor of Pediatrics and Neurology
Harvard Medical School
Chief of the Division of Genetics and Genomics
Boston Children's Hospital
Investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute

Dr. Walsh completed his MD and PhD degrees at the University of Chicago, neurology residency and chief residency at Massachusetts General Hospital, and postdoctoral training in Genetics with Connie Cepko at Harvard Medical School. In 1993 he became Assistant Professor of Neurology at Harvard and Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center. From 2003-2007 he served as

Director of the Harvard-MIT Combined MD-PhD training program. He moved to Boston Children’s Hospital in 2006, becoming Chief of Genetics. Dr. Walsh’s research has focused on the development and function of the human cerebral cortex, pioneering the analysis of genetic diseases that affect the developing brain, resulting in epilepsy, intellectual disability, autism spectrum disorders (ASD), and other conditions. His lab has identified more than three dozen neurological disease genes, and described how a few of these disease genes were important targets of the evolutionary processes that shaped the human brain. Recent work has pioneered the understanding of clonal somatic mutations as a cause of focal epilepsy and a portion of ASD, and the wide genomic diversity of neurons in human brain. Dr. Walsh’s research has been recognized by a Javits Award from the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, the Dreifus Penry Award from the American Academy of Neurology, the Derek Denny-Brown and Jacoby Awards from the American Neurological Association, the Research Award from the

American Epilepsy Society, the Pruzhansky Award from the American College of Medical Genetics, the Cajal Club Discoverer Award, the Perl-Neuroscience Award from the University of North Carolina, and the Distinguished Alumni Award from the University of Chicago. Dr. Walsh is an elected fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Sciences, and a member of the American Association of Physicians, the National Academy of Medicine, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the National Academy of Sciences.

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