GENETIC DISEASE - Key Persons
Aiko Otsubo Ph.D completed her laboratory genetics and genomics (LGG) fellowship at Indiana University. She obtained her Ph.D from Purdue University and did postdoctoral research at the University of Pennsylvania and the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP). Her long-standing interests are focused on the impact of genomic variations on multiple biological contexts, including evolution, inheritance and human disease. During her postdoctoral time at the CHOP, she had excellent exposure to the clinical genetics field and grew a passion for genetic diagnosis and patient care. Dr. Otsubo has published on rare genetic variants and new genetic syndromes detected by chromosomal microarray and whole exome sequencing. As a future clinical laboratory director, she is very passionate to help patients by finding and delivering their genetic diagnosis. She is also interested in advancing the field of clinical genetics by performing translational research and developing and performing new cutting-edge assays
Job Titles:
- Director, International Center for Genetic Disease, Harvard Medical School
Dr. Haghighi is an Assistant Professor and clinician-scientist in the Department of Medicine, Brigham and Women's Hospital, Harvard Medical School. He is an American board-certified geneticist. He completed his graduate and clinical training at University of Oxford, and Harvard Medical School. Dr. Haghighi is the Founding Director of BWH International Center for Genetic Disease (iCGD), and the PI and Director of the National Genome Project of Bahrain (Phase I: $10M) at Harvard.
For his research, he investigates the genetic basis for human disease, with a focus on cardiovascular disease (e.g., cardiomyopathies, and congenital heart disease) and translating the research discoveries into better diagnostics and improved patient care. He is the PI on two NIH- and AHA-funded projects for investigating the genetics of unexplained cardiomyopathies in adult and children. He is also the Director of GEnetics NEtwork in the Middle East and Africa (GENE-ME), a large clinical research network for genetic studies in those regions that aims to: (1) identify novel disease-causing mutations and genotype-phenotype correlations, and (2) advance genomic medicine in the Middle East and Africa through capacity building.
Dr. Haghighi has led many international projects for advancing medical science in different countries to improve the health and well-being of people. He is the Founding President of Advancement Initiative for Medicine and Science (AIMS), a global foundation that brings together academics and physicians and is dedicated to advancing medical science and healthcare around the world.
He has received many awards for his research and international projects, including the International Genetic Disorders Prevention Award in 2018 (for outstanding contributions to and scientific excellence in genetic research), the Global Health Pioneer Award in 2019 (for significant contribution to improving the quality of life through innovation and capacity building).
Job Titles:
- Chief of the Public Health Lab
- Chief, Reference Public Health Laboratories ( PHLs ) Chief, National Influenza Center, Public Health Directorate
- Chief, Reference Public Health Laboratories / Chief, National Influenza Center, Public Health Directorate
Amjad Ghanem Mohamed is the chief of the Public Health Lab, Kingdom of Bahrain. She directs and supervises all laboratory activities related to communicable diseases, food & water safety, and quality testing. She also serves as the vice-chairman of the National Committee for Health Laboratories and Biosafety. She is a member of several national committees including the higher Committee for pandemics elimination, International Health Regulation (IHR), the National Immunization Committee, and the National Certification Committees (NCCs) for polio, measles, and rubella. She leads the team for the National Genome Project Implantation Plan and supervises the national viral genetic analysis laboratory activities. Amjad is the WHO focal point for Public Health Laboratory activities, National influenza Center and Food Poisoning PULS-NET. She has led several national environmental projects such as, detection of radioactive and mineral pollution in local and imported fish products, and detection of the pesticide residue in food and water in cooperation with the International Atomic Energy Agency.
She obtained her bachelor's degree in microbiology from Kuwait University, and her master's degree in food microbiology and quality management from Greenwich University.
Job Titles:
- Assistant Professor
- Co - Director
- Co - Director of the Mendelian Genomics Research Center / Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard / Assistant Professor of Pediatrics, Harvard Medical School
Dr. O'Donnell-Luria is co-director of the Mendelian Genomics Research Center at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, where she is an associate member as well as the associate director of the Program in Medical and Population Genetics. She is also an Assistant Professor of pediatrics at Harvard Medical School, a faculty member in the Division of Genetics and Genomics at Boston Children's Hospital, and affiliated faculty in the Analytic and Translational Genetics Unit at Massachusetts General Hospital. Her research group at Boston Children's Hospital and the Broad focuses on using large-scale genomic and transcriptomic approaches to increasing the rate of rare disease diagnosis through improving rare variant interpretation and empowering the discovery of novel disease genes. She is particularly interested in how we can leverage gnomAD, a massive reference population database, in these efforts including in estimating rare disease prevalence. She also studies incomplete penetrance of genetic conditions, or why only some people with a disease-causing genetic variant will develop symptoms.
Dr. O'Donnell-Luria received her B.S. in biological chemistry with a minor in mathematics from Tulane University before her M.D./Ph.D. training at Columbia University Medical Center. She completed the Boston Children's Hospital and Harvard Medical School (HMS) Combined Pediatrics-Genetics Residency Program and a Medical Biochemical Genetics Fellowship, also at HMS and Boston Children's Hospital. She received postdoctoral training in the MacArthur laboratory at the Broad Institute and MGH.
Job Titles:
- Member of the BOARD
- Chief Data Officer and Institute Scientist / Co - Director, Eric and Wendy Schmidt Center
- Chief Data Officer of the Broad Institute of MIT
- Chief Data Officer, Institute Scientist / Co - Director, Eric and Wendy Schmidt Center
Anthony Philippakis is the chief data officer of the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, and the co-director of the Eric and Wendy Schmidt Center.
He trained as a cardiologist at Brigham and Women's Hospital, with a focus on rare genetic cardiovascular diseases. At the Broad Institute he is the founding director of the Data Sciences Platform, an organization of over 200 software engineers and computational biologists that develops software for analyzing genomic and clinical data. In addition to his roles at the Broad Institute and Brigham and Women's Hospital, Philippakis is a venture partner at GV, focusing on machine learning, distributed computing, and genomics.
Philippakis received his M.D. from Harvard Medical School and completed a Ph.D. in biophysics at Harvard. As an undergraduate, he studied mathematics at Yale University, and later completed the Part III (equivalent to M.Phil.) in mathematics at Cambridge University.
Job Titles:
- Lead Medical Illustrator, International Center for Genetic Disease / Chief Medical Illustrator and Creative Director, Journal of Global Neurosurgery
- Medical Illustrator
Chidiebere Ibe is a medical illustrator and a medical student at Kyiv Medical University. Chidiebere was born 31 March 1996. Having lost his mother to surgery for fibroid, he became passionate about medicine, especially as it relates to mothers and children. He is a self-taught medical illustrator. He learnt to draw medical illustrations using just a computer mouse. He is aspiring to be a pediatric neurosurgeon.
Job Titles:
- Chief, Division of Genetics and Genomics, Boston Children 's Hospital
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 Professor Connie Cepko at Harvard Medical School. In 1993 he became Assistant Professor of Neurology at Harvard and Beth Israel-Deaconess Medical Center and was promoted to Bullard Professor of Neurology in 1999. In 2002 he was appointed an Investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. 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, which in 2014 merged with the Program in Genomics to become the Division of Genetics and Genomics. The Division contains more than thirty full-time faculty members, roughly evenly divided between clinicians treating children with rare genetic disease, and researchers studying the genetic causes of human illness.
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, and other conditions. His lab has identified more than three dozen neurological disease genes by establishing world-wide collaborations and pioneering the analysis of recessive brain disorders in countries where marriage between distant relatives is common. He has described how a few disease genes essential for constructing the brain were also important targets of the evolutionary processes that shaped the human brain, resulting in the founding of the Allen Discovery Center for Human Brain Evolution in 2017. Recent work has pioneered the understanding of clonal somatic mutations as important causes of human focal epilepsy and autism, and the remarkable genomic diversity of single neurons in human brain.
Dr. Walsh's research has been recognized by a Javits Award from the NINDS, the Dreifuss-Penry Epilepsy Award from the American Academy of Neurology, the Derek Denny-Brown and Jacoby Awards from the American Neurological Association, the Clinical 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, the Distinguished Alumni Award from the University of Chicago, and the Gruber Neuroscience Prize in 2021. Dr. Walsh is an elected fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Sciences, and an elected 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.
Job Titles:
- Chairman of the Department Genetics at Harvard Medical School
Dr. Cliff Tabin is Chair of the Department Genetics at Harvard Medical School, and a pioneer developmental biologist.
The common theme of Dr. Tabin's research investigations has been an attempt to understand "pattern formation", how the organization of an embryo arises during its development. His efforts are responsible for our current understanding of such embryological questions as why the leg is different in form from the arm, and why the heart is on the left and not the right, as well as evolutionary questions such as understanding the genetic basis for the differences in the shapes of the beaks of different species of Darwin's Finches in the Galapagos Islands.
In addition to his research program, Dr. Tabin has had a major involvement in education efforts at Harvard Medical School, teaching embryology and genetics to both the medical students and the graduate students. He has also played a leadership role in recent wide-ranging medical education reform at Harvard. Additionally, Dr. Tabin has utilized his expertise in this area to assist the development of a new medical school in Nepal.
Dr. Tabin was elected a member of the National Academy of Sciences in 2007. Among his many honors, he received the National Academy of Sciences Award in 1999; the March of Dimes Prize in Developmental Biology in 2008; elected to the European Molecular Biology Organization in 2010; received the Conklin Medal from the Society for Developmental Biology in 2012, received a ScD honoris causa degree from Union College, Schenectady, New York; asked to present the Harvey Lecture in 2012, and was elected Foreign Member of the Royal Society of London in 2014.
Dr. Tabin completed his graduate studies in Biology at MIT in 1984, studying oncogenes with Bob Weinberg. He has been on the faculty in the HMS Department of Genetics since 1989. He has been a Full Professor since 1997 and was appointed Chairman of the Department in January 2007.
Job Titles:
- Member of the BOARD
- Chief of Medical Genetics and Metabolism, Massachusetts General Hospital / Co - Director Pitt Hopkins Syndrome Clinic
- Chief, Division of Genetics, Massachusetts General Hospital / Co - Director Pitt Hopkins Syndrome Clinic
Dr. Sweetser graduated with Honors from Stanford University, then completed his MD/PhD at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, and Pediatric Residency training at St. Louis Children's Hosp. He did his Medical Genetics Fellowship training at the Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis and the University of Washington in Seattle along with a Biochemical Genetics Fellowship. He completed a Post-Doctoral Fellowship in the laboratory of Dr. Richard Palmiter. He subsequently completed a Fellowship in Pediatric Hematology/Oncology at the University of Washington. in Seattle. He is Board Certified in Clinical Genetics and Genomics, Clinical Biochemical Genetics, and Pediatric Hematology-Oncology.
Since 2003 Dr. Sweetser has been at Massachusetts General Hospital and sees patients in Medical Genetics and Metabolism as well as Pediatric Hematology/Oncology. He specializes in children and adults with metabolic disease, neurodevelopment disorders, complex undiagnosed disorders as well as those with inherited hematological disorders and children with genetic disorders predisposing to malignancies. In 2011 he was appointed as Chief of Medical Genetics and Metabolism at Massachusetts General Hospital and in 2017 was awarded the Lewis and Leslie Holmes Endowed Chair in Genetics and Teratology. The Medical Genetics program at MGH includes 11 geneticists and has over 4000 patient encounters a year and provides services to three major hospitals in the Boson area. Under his leadership the Genetics Program has markedly expanded with specialty clinics in Turner Syndrome, Williams Syndrome, Stickler Syndrome, del22q Syndrome, Hereditary Hemorrhagic Telangiectasia, CHARGE syndrome, Klinefelter syndrome, and a multidisciplinary Sensorineural Hearing Loss Clinic at the MEEI, an Autism Genetics Clinic at the Lurie Center, Pediatric Cancer Predisposition Clinic, Pitt Hopkins Syndrome, as well as a world renown Down Syndrome clinic. Dr Sweetser teaches a graduate course, "Genetics in Medicine" in the Biological and Biomedical Sciences program at Harvard and is the MGH Site Director of the Harvard Medical School Genetics Training program.
Dr. Sweetser also runs a research lab in the Center for Genomic Medicine and MGH Cancer Center investigating several genetic disorders including Pitt Hopkins Syndrome, IQSEC2 -related disorder, and leukemia. Together with Dr. Stephen Haggarty he has systematically generated and characterized patient derived induced pluripotent stem cell (iPSC) models of several inherited monogenic causes of intellectual disability and neurodevelopmental disorders developing phenotypic assays amenable to drug screening to precision targeted therapeutics. Dr. Sweetser has been a leader in the application of whole exome sequencing to clinical diagnostics and expanding clinical genetics applications throughout MGH. Dr. Sweetser is also the MGH site director for the NIH sponsored Undiagnosed Diseases Network linking 11 medical centers around the country to accelerate discovery and innovation in the way we diagnose and treat patients with previously undiagnosed diseases.
Job Titles:
- Head of the Genetic Department at Salmanyia Medical Complex - Ministry of Health
Dr. Amani Al Hajeri is the Head of the Genetic Department at Salmanyia Medical Complex-Ministry of Health in Bahrain and the former Manager of the National Genome Project. She is a Clinical Assistant Professor at Al Jawhara Center, a consultant clinical geneticist and a consultant family physician. She had her BSc in Basic medical sciences with honors from the Arabian Gulf University and graduated as a medical doctor from the same university. She joined the Family residency program for 4 years and attained the Arab Board Certificate in Family and Community Medicine and the Irish Board in Family medicine. She later joined the genetics department at the Ministry of Health and completed a master degree in Medical Genetics (with honors) from the University of Glasgow/ UK.
Dr. Al Hajeri has more than 46 publications in local and international peer reviewed journals. She is also a senior editor at Bahrain Medical Bulletin and an expert reviewer in several international medical journals. She has a special interest in evidence-based medicine, rare diseases, and common complex genetic disorders. She is a member in several governmental committees and a member in many professional societies and NGOs.
Job Titles:
- Lecturer
- Lecturer on Medicine, Harvard Medical School / Director for Research, International Center for Genetic Disease / Senior Scientist, Department of Medicine
- Lecturer on Medicine, Harvard Medical School / Director of Research, International Center
Dr. Amirreza Haghighi is a Lecturer on Medicine at Harvard Medical School, a Senior Scientist in the Department of Medicine, Brigham and Women's Hospital, and the Director for Research, International Center for Genetic Disease, Harvard Medical School. He investigates the genetic basis of human disease and translates the findings into better diagnostics and improved patient care. His studies have aimed to identify new genes responsible for a number of conditions from complex disorders to Mendelian diseases. He also directs the International Genomic Medicine Courses which specifically focus on strategies and knowledge for clinical management of genetic disorders and on the analysis of genetic test results.
His research on common diseases has focused on obesity. He has investigated the genetic and environmental factors underlying obesity. For example, his GWA analyses showed that OPRM1 modulates dietary intake of fat and hence risk for obesity, and this effect may be modulated by subtle variations in the amygdala volume. He led a cross-sectional study of a population-based cohort to analyze the association between maternal smoking and obesity, and showed that prenatal exposure to maternal cigarette smoking may promote obesity by enhancing dietary preference for fat, and this effect may be mediated in part through subtle structural variations in the amygdala.
Dr. Daniel Quiat is a pediatric cardiologist at Boston Children's Hospital and an Instructor of Pediatrics at Harvard Medical School. Dr. Quiat earned his MD and PhD in 2014 from the Medical Science Training Program (MSTP) at University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center. Dr. Quiat then completed both his residency and fellowship at Boston Children's Hospital, where he is board certified in pediatrics and pediatric cardiology with specialties in pediatric cardiomyopathies and congenital heart defects. In addition to his clinical responsibilities, Dr. Quiat pursues biomedical research in cardiovascular development and genetics in collaboration with the Seidman Lab at Harvard Medical School Department of Genetics, with a goal of identifying genetic causes of single ventricle heart disease and illuminating the role of those genetic factors in the development of heart failure and other clinical outcomes.
Job Titles:
- Corporate Vice President for Research & Incubations / Microsoft
- Corporate Vice President of Research
Dr. Peter Lee is Corporate Vice President of Research and Incubations at Microsoft. He leads Microsoft Research and incubates new research-powered products and lines of business in areas such as artificial intelligence, computing foundations, health, and life sciences. He speaks and writes widely on science and technology trends. Before joining Microsoft in 2010, he was at DARPA, where he established a new technology office that created operational capabilities in machine learning, data science, and computational social science. Prior to that, he was a professor and the head of the computer science department at Carnegie Mellon University. Dr. Lee is a member of the National Academy of Medicine and serves on the Boards of Directors of several institutes for the Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence, the Brotman Baty Institute for Precision Medicine, and the Kaiser Permanente Bernard J. Tyson School of Medicine. He served on President Obama's Commission on Enhancing National Cybersecurity and led studies for PCAST and the National Academies. He has testified before both the US House Science and Technology Committee and the US Senate Commerce Committee. He is the co-author of the book, "The AI Revolution in Medicine: GPT-4 and Beyond."
Job Titles:
- Assistant Professor
- Associate Director, MGB Laboratory of Molecular Medicine / Director, Translational Genomics Core, MGB Personalized Medicine / Assistant Professor of Pathology Harvard Medical School
- Director, Translational Genomics Core, MGB Personalized Medicine / Assistant Professor of Pathology
Dr. Sami S Amr is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Pathology at Brigham and Women's Hospital and Harvard Medical School. He is also Associate Director of the Laboratory of Molecular Medicine and Director of the Biobank Genomics Core at Mass General Brigham Personalized Medicine. Dr. Amr is also board certified in clinical molecular genetics by the American Board of Medical Genetics and Genomics (ABMGG).
Dr. Amr's career spans over 10 years in clinical molecular diagnostics, where he has led the development and implementation of several clinical assays including large gene panels for inherited disease as well as smaller panels/assays for technically challenging regions or genes. In addition, has been involved in analysis, interpretation and reporting of clinical genetics testing for a variety of genetic disease areas with a focus on hearing loss. Dr. Amr serves as co-chair of the ClinGen Hearing Loss Working Group whose efforts focus on the standardization of variant classification and the assessment of gene-disease association in this disease area. He has also been involved in national committees to assess genetic screening as part of newborn hearing screen testing and on several clinical translational projects involving hearing loss testing.
Dr. Amr has authored or co-authored over 40 publications on clinical and technical aspects of genetic testing, molecular diagnostics, and approaches to genetic data interpretation. He has also lectured on a broad range of topics in the clinical diagnostics and biomarkers discoveries at national and international conferences. In addition, Dr. Amr plays an active role in the mentorship and training of clinical and laboratory AMBGG fellows as well genetic counselors, medical students, and colleagues
Job Titles:
- Director of the Dr. Harvey Levy Program for Phenylketonuria
- Director, Harvey Levy Program for Phenylketonuria and Related Conditions / Director, PAL ( Phenylalanine Ammonia Lyase ) Clinic
Dr. Stephanie Sacharow is a medical geneticist experienced in the management of patients with a variety of genetic conditions and metabolic disease. She studied Neuroscience at Vanderbilt University prior to attending the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine, and later joining their faculty. Dr. Sacharow is board certified in Pediatrics, Medical Genetics and Medical Biochemical Genetics, and has been practicing over 15 years. She was involved with the implementation and execution of expanded newborn screening for metabolic disease for the South Florida region, and was director of the Cleft Lip and Palate team. Dr. Sacharow was also program director for the genetics training programs, and taught medical school and master's level courses. Dr. Sacharow was recruited to Boston Children's Hospital/Harvard Medical School in 2015.
Dr. Sacharow is the director of the Dr. Harvey Levy Program for Phenylketonuria and Related Conditions, and the medical director of the PAL clinic at Boston Children's Hospital. Dr. Sacharow is team member and provider for the BoLD Lysosomal Storage Disease Program. She has been involved in research studies with a focus on autism, genomic imbalances, inborn errors of metabolism and novel genes for rare disorders. Dr. Sacharow is currently principal investigator and co-investigator in multiple clinical trials for Phenylketonuria and Homocystinuria. She has expertise in the management of patients with pegvaliase (Palynziq), having been an investigator in the clinic trials leading the PAL clinic at Boston Children's Hospital, and co-author of the management guidelines for pegvaliase. She has been an invited speaker at national and international conferences to educate and share the BCH PAL program's experiences and practice improvements.
Job Titles:
- Postdoctoral Research Fellow / Department of Biomedical Informatics, Harvard Medical School
Dr. Koch is a postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Biomedical Informatics at Harvard Medical School. He works on statistical and theoretical problems in population and evolutionary genetics. His current research projects include using precise mutation rate estimates in the human genome to measure natural selection on a fine scale, and the investigation of selection on human traits using the results of genome-wide association studies. He has also worked on arabidopsis and wolf genetics, and currently has added the SARS-CoV-2 virus to this mix.
Dr. Koch obtained my PhD in Ecology and Evolution from the University of Chicago, where he was an NSF GRFP fellow. Before that, he graduated from the University of Texas with a BS in Biology (honors), and a certificate in computational science.
Job Titles:
- Member of the BOARD
- Director, NHGRI Center for Excellence in Genomic Science
- Professor of Genetics at Harvard Medical School
Dr. Church is Professor of Genetics at Harvard Medical School and Professor of Health Sciences and Technology at Harvard and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), a founding member of the Wyss Institute, and Director of PersonalGenomes.org, the world's only open-access information on human genomic, environmental, and trait data. Dr. Church is Director of IARPA & NIH BRAIN Projects, and Director of the National Institutes of Health Center for Excellence in Genomic Science.
Dr. Church is known for pioneering the fields of personal genomics and synthetic biology. He developed the first methods for the first genome sequence & dramatic cost reductions since then (down from $3 billion to $600), contributing to nearly all "next generation sequencing" methods and companies. His team invented CRISPR for human stem cell genome editing and other synthetic biology technologies and applications - including new ways to create organs for transplantation, gene therapies for aging reversal, and gene drives to eliminate Lyme Disease and Malaria. He has co-authored more than 590 papers and 155 patent publications, and one book, "Regenesis".
He has received numerous awards including the 2011 Bower Award and Prize for Achievement in Science from the Franklin Institute, the Time 100, and election to the National Academy of Sciences and Engineering.
Job Titles:
- Jacqueline Hazel Leder Professor of Genetics
- Professor
Job Titles:
- Clinical Director, Division of Cancer Genetics and Prevention / Senior Physician, Dana - Farber Cancer Institute / Assistant Professor of Medicine, Harvard Medical School
Huma Q. Rana, MD, MPH is the Clinical Director of the Division of Cancer Genetics and Prevention at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, and Assistant Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School. At Dana-Farber and its affiliates and satellites, Dr. Rana oversees the medical management and the clinical operations that provide care to individuals with rare genetic susceptibilities to cancer.
In addition to her clinical work, Dr. Rana leads multiple clinical research projects focused on developing cancer prevention and screening for those with hereditary cancer risk, and novel approaches to improving access to cancer genetics services.
Dr. Rana received her medical degree from the Rutgers Robert Wood Johnson Medical School, completed her residencies in Internal Medicine and Clinical Genetics at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, and received her MPH from the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. She has been a member of the Dana-Farber faculty since 2012.
Job Titles:
- Associate Professor
- Chief of Medical Staff
Dr. Al Salman is an Associate Professor in the Arabian Gulf University and is involved in a wide range of educational and research activities. She published many articles in peer reviewed journals. She led several international, regional, and local committees and quality projects. She is also in editorial Board of the several Medical Journals.
She graduated with Honor from the medical school at Arabian Gulf University. Then she joined the Salmaniya Medical complex in 1996. She holds three American Board certifications: American Board in Internal Medicine, American Board in Geriatric Medicine, American Board in Infectious Diseases. Further, she has the board in infection control and recently the American board in medical quality. Dr. Al Salman has completed her residency and fellowship programs in the United States, where she finished the internal medicine residency in Eason, Hahnemann University, Pennsylvania, USA. Then she did a fellowship in geriatric medicine at Temple University in Pennsylvania, followed by a fellowship in infectious diseases at Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut, USA.
She is a member of the Strategic and Technical Advisory Group for Antimicrobial resistance (STAG-AMR) which is the principal advisory group to the World Health Organization (WHO) on antimicrobial resistance, and a member of WHO Infection control and prevention development guidelines for COVID-19. She has received several awards locally, regional, and internationally for her scientific contribution.
Job Titles:
- Assistant Professor of Genetics, Harvard Medical School / Director, Harvard Medical School Genetics Training Program Course
Dr. Picker graduated in Medicine from Aberdeen University in Scotland. He followed this with training in Pediatrics and a PhD in Molecular Biology (Agriculture), both carried out in Newcastle upon Tyne, England. Following this he undertook clinical genetics and child and adolescent psychiatry training at Boston Children's Hospital where he has stayed on as faculty.
He is focused on bringing personalized medicine into the mainstream. His research is focused on application of genomics with special reference to behavioral disorders.
At BCH, he is focused on development of personalized medicine through leading the education of trainees (as director of the Advanced Human Genetics Course at Harvard Medical School) as well as directly via the co-founding and co- directorship of the BCH Pharmacogenomic clinic, the first dedicated precision medicine clinical initiative at BCH. In addition to clinical care, this clinic plays a central role in training and support within and beyond the hospital.
Job Titles:
- Member of the BOARD
- Division Director of Maternal Fetal Medicine and Reproductive Genetics at the Brigham
- Division Director, Maternal Fetal Medicine and Reproductive Genetics, Brigham and Women 's Hospital
Dr. Louise Wilkins-Haug is the Division Director of Maternal Fetal Medicine and Reproductive Genetics at the Brigham and Women's Hospital. She is board-certified in Medical Genetics, Obstetrics and Gynecology and Maternal Fetal Medicine. Dr. Wilkins-Haug received her bachelor's degree from James Madison University in Biology. She completed her PhD in Human Genetics at Medical College of Virginia. She received her MD degree in Medicine at Stanford University School of Medicine. She has over two decades of experience leading a prenatal Down syndrome screening program and currently oversees the genetic counseling, perinatal consultation, fetal treatment and diagnostic testing at BWH. She is an active clinical provider in the Maternal Fetal Medicine practice and provides continuity care for women with high risk pregnancies. This high-risk office has a national and international referral base and provides care and delivery for >2000 women a year. From this experience, she has witnessed the challenges faced by obstetric providers with the evaluation and application of genetic testing for stillbirth, leading to our institution's implementation of a standard protocol for clinical evaluation of stillbirth and quarterly reviews of all stillbirths at BWH.
Dr. Wilkins-Haug has been the lead fetal interventionist for a 20-year collaborative program with Boston Children's Hospital to alter the natural in utero history of aortic stenosis evolving to hypoplastic left heart syndrome. Our program established the safety and efficacy of fetal aortic valve dilation, and continues to assess predictors of success, examines cardiac, medical and neurologic outcomes and participates in the training of individuals who have successfully established similar programs at institutions worldwide.
Job Titles:
- Assistant Professor of Biomedical Informatics / Harvard Medical School
- Assistant Professor of of Biomedical Informatics AtHarvard Medical School
Dr. Farhat is an Assistant Professor of of Biomedical Informatics atHarvard Medical School and a a practicing physician at the Massachusetts General Hospital Division of Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine.
Dr. Farhat's research focuses on the development and application of methods for associating genotype and phenotype in infectious disease pathogens, with a strong emphasis on translation to better diagnostics and surveillance in resource-poor settings. Farhat's work has focused on bacterial and viral pathoges and spans the spectrum from computational analysis to field studies. She is PI and Co-Investigator on several large projects funded by NIH including the NIAID and the BD2K initiative.
Maha Farhat holds an MD from the McGill University Faculty of Medicine and a MSc in biostatistics from the Harvard Chan School of Public Health.
Job Titles:
- Director of the Projects Directorate
Nick Szczerba is a recent graduate of Misericordia University where he earned Bachelor's degrees in Healthcare Management and Philosophy in 2020, along with a Master's of Business Administration concentrated in healthcare in 2021. Coming from a family of clinicians and educating himself on the complexities of healthcare and the sciences, Nick has found great interest in the operational, financial, and administrative duties within the field. He finds pleasure in pursing these passions knowing that he is contributing to a team and to research that will help improve the lives of many people going forward.
Job Titles:
- Member of the BOARD
- Chief, Division of Genetics, Brigham and Women 's Hospital / Professor of Medicine, Harvard Medical School
- Professor of Medicine, Harvard Medical School / Division of Genetics, Brigham and Women 's Hospital
Dr. Maas is Professor of Medicine (Genetics) at Harvard Medical School, and former Chief of the Division of Genetics at Brigham and Women's Hospital, a position he has held for over 20 years. His credentials include 30 years on the HMS faculty as a physician-scientist, tenure as an HHMI Investigator, election to the ASCI and as a Fellow of the AAAS, an NIH MERIT Award, and many others. Faculty of the BWH Division of Genetics include members of HHMI, NAS, and NAM, as well as past winners of the Gairdner, Lasker, and Breakthrough Prizes. Dr. Maas has also been PI of the BWH Biomedical Research Institute Director's Transformative Award that provides institutional support to Brigham Genomic Medicine (BGM). BGM is an integrated clinical and research program that enables BWH faculty from multiple BWH departments and divisions to diagnose genetic disorders and to discover new monogenic disease genes via WES/WGS. He is also a prior PI of and is now on the External Scientific Advisory Group of an NIH U01 Consortium called FaceBase that employs WES/WGS to identify genes that cause craniofacial birth defects, Director of the Harvard Undiagnosed Disease Clinical Site (HUDN-CS) Genome Analysis Team. In addition, he previously directed a large NIH U54 Interdisciplinary Research Consortium focused on systems biology approaches to organ regeneration. His research focuses on the developmental genetics of vertebrate organogenesis, on disease gene discovery, and on the clinical implementation of genomic medicine.
Dr. Maas earned his undergraduate degree in chemistry from Dartmouth College before matriculating in the Vanderbilt M.D., Ph.D. program. Dr. Maas then pursued his internship and residency in Internal Medicine at Brigham and Women's Hospital and completed his postdoctoral training with Dr. Philip Leder in the Department of Genetics at Harvard Medical School. He joined the HMS faculty in the Division of Genetics at Brigham in 1989.
Dr. Higgins is the President of Brigham and Women's Hospital and Executive Vice President at Mass General Brigham. He previously served as Surgeon-in-Chief at Johns Hopkins Hospital, the William Stewart Halsted Professor of Surgery and Director of the Department of Surgery at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine.
Dr. Higgins is a leading authority in heart and lung transplantation, minimally invasive cardiac surgery and mechanical circulatory support. He is renowned as a world class researcher and is recognized nationally and internationally for his research in the areas of heart and lung transplantation and disparities in outcomes in cardiac surgery.
Prior to joining Hopkins, He served as Department of Surgery Chair and Director of the Comprehensive Transplant Center at The Ohio State University Medical Center. He also served as a Major in the United States Army Reserve Medical Corps for 13 years and while doing so, supported the Richmond Veterans Administration transplantation program.
Dr. Higgins has served in numerous national professional leadership roles including the President of the Society of Thoracic Surgeons, President of the United Network for Organ Sharing, President of the Society of Black Academic Surgeons, President and founding member of the Association of Black Cardiovascular and Thoracic Surgeons and as a member of the Board of Directors of the American Board of Thoracic Surgery.
Dr. Higgins earned his bachelor's degree from Dartmouth College and medical degree from Yale School of Medicine. He completed a residency in general surgery and served as Chief Resident at the University Hospitals of Pittsburgh. He was a Winchester Scholar and fellow in cardiothoracic surgery at the Yale School of Medicine and earned a master's degree in health services administration at Virginia Commonwealth University.
Job Titles:
- Member of the BOARD
- Professor of Genetics, Harvard Medical School
- Professor of Genetics, Harvard Medical School / Professor of Health Sciences and Technology, Harvard and MIT
Job Titles:
- Member of the BOARD
- Professor
- Professor of Biomedical Informatics, Harvard Medical School / Professor of Medicine, Brigham and Women 's Hospital
Dr. Sunyaev is a computational genomicist and geneticist. Research in his lab encompasses many aspects of population genetic variation including the origin of mutations, the effect of allelic variants on molecular function, population and evolutionary genetics, and genetics of human complex and Mendelian traits. He developed several computational and statistical methods widely adopted by the community.
Job Titles:
- Public Outreach & Communications Lead / International Center for Genetic Disease / Brigham and Women 's Hospital / Harvard Medical School
Earned her Bachelor's Degree in Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences in 2011 from Al Baa'th University in Homs, Syria. In 2019, she earned her Doctor of Pharmacy (PharmD) from MCPHS University in Boston, MA. Since 2017, Victoria has worked at TaraVista Behavioral Health Center in Massachusetts as a pharmacist and Director of Pharmacy. She is very passionate about patient care, and she has an interest in pharmcogenomics and social media.
Job Titles:
- Dean of Harvard School
- Dean, Harvard School of Dental Medicine / Professor of Oral Medicine, Infection, and Immunity
Dr. Giannobile is the Dean of Harvard School of Dental Medicine (HSDM), and a leader in the field of periodontology and an internationally recognized scholar in oral regenerative medicine, tissue engineering, and precision medicine.
Prior to HSDM, he served as the Najjar Endowed Professor and chair of the Department of Periodontics and Oral Medicine at the University of Michigan School of Dentistry. He was also a Professor of Biomedical Engineering at the College of Engineering and Biointerfaces Institute. He received his DDS and MS in oral biology from the University of Missouri. He later received his certificate in periodontology and Doctor of Medical Sciences in oral biology from the Harvard School of Dental Medicine. He completed postdoctoral training in molecular biology at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Harvard Medical School. Dr. Giannobile previously held positions as a faculty member at HSDM as an Assistant Professor of Periodontology and at the Forsyth Institute. He has served as a visiting professor at the University of Genoa Medical School Biotechnology Institute and the Eastman Dental Institute, University College London.
Dr. Giannobile's research focuses on oral and periodontal regenerative medicine, tissue engineering and precision medicine. He has maintained a continuously NIH-funded research program over the past 25 years, and serves as co-principal investigator for the NIDCR-supported Michigan-Pittsburgh-Wyss Regenerative Medicine Resource Center. The goal of the center is to translate early stage dental, oral and craniofacial reconstructive technologies into clinical practice. He has produced over 300 manuscripts, textbook chapters, and patents focused on periodontology, regenerative medicine and oral health research. He is the editor or co-editor of nine books focused on clinical, translational research, periodontology and regenerative medicine. He recently completed a ten-year term as the editor-in-chief for the Journal of Dental Research, the official journal of the International Association for Dental Research.
Dr. Giannobile is a recipient of the American Dental Association's Norton Ross Award for Excellence in Clinical Research, and the Distinguished Scientist Award from the Academy of Periodontology. He is a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Association for Dental Research and the International and American Colleges of Dentists. He is a past president of the American Academy of Periodontology Foundation, and currently serves as the President of the Osteology Foundation.