Division of Genetics & Genomics

Division of Genetics & Genomics

People

Principal Investigator

Christopher A. Walsh, MD, PhD

Investigator, Howard Hughes Medical Center;
Chief, Division of Genetics and Genomics, Boston Children’s Hospital; Bullard Professor of Pediatrics and Neurology, Harvard Medical School; Director, Allen Discovery Center for Human Brain Evolution

 

The Evolution of a Neuroscientist

The seventh of eight children of a Catholic, Norwegian-Irish-American family. Christopher A. Walsh was born and raised in Cranford, New Jersey.

He was the first member of his family not to attend Catholic schools, graduating from the Pingry School. He studied chemistry at Bucknell University, where physiological psychology research led him to discover neuroscience.

He completed a combined MD/PhD training program at the University of Chicago. His PhD thesis, with Rainer Guillery, studied the development of connections between the retina and the brain, during which he spent a year as a Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst fellow at the Max-Planck Institute in Frankfurt, Germany with Wolf Singer and Heinz Wässle.

He then moved to Boston for medical internship, neurology residency and chief residency at the Massachusetts General Hospital. During and after residency, he was a postdoctoral fellow in the Harvard Medical School Genetics Department with Connie Cepko, where he published the first studies of cell lineage and neuronal migration in the cerebral cortex using retroviral vectors, and then developed the first retroviral libraries with “DNA barcodes” that allow lineages to be traced independent of patterns of migration and intermingling of clones.

Dr. Walsh established his laboratory in 1993. Read more about the evolution of his research in the Science section of this website. >

Post-Doctoral Fellows

Callison Alcott MD, PhD

Callison Alcott MD, PhD

Postdoctoral Fellow

Email >

Rebecca Andersen, PhD

Rebecca Andersen, PhD

Postdoctoral Fellow

Becky received her PhD in Developmental and Stem Cell Biology from UCSF in 2019. Her primary focus is on understanding how lncRNAs regulate human brain development and how their disruption can contribute to neuro-developmental disorders.

Email >

Ellen DeGennaro

William Choi, MD, PhD

Postdoctoral Fellow

William received his M.D. and Ph.D. degrees from Baylor College of Medicine in Houston. TX, and completed his residency in obstetrics and gynecology at Tulane University in New Orleans, LA. He is a clinical fellow in the Harvard Genetics Training Program. He joined the Walsh lab in 2023 as a postdoctoral fellow interested in somatic mutations that arise in human neural development.

Email >

Ellen DeGennaro

Emre Caglayan, PhD

Postdoctoral Fellow

Emre received his PhD in Neuroscience from UTSW in 2023. His main focus in the Walsh lab is to discover brain somatic mutation patterns across human and non-human primate species to study their role in human brain evolution and disease.

Email >

Ellen DeGennaro

Kow Essuman, MD, PhD

Postdoctoral Fellow

Kow received his M.D. and Ph.D degrees from Washington University in St. Louis School of Medicine, and is currently a Neurosurgery Resident physician at Massachusetts General Hospital. As post-doctoral fellow in the Walsh lab, Kow is interested in better understanding somatic mutations in the normal human brain and in Neurofibromatosis, and how these mutations drive brain tumor growth

Email >

Ellen DeGennaro

Ellen DeGennaro, PhD

Postdoctoral Fellow

Ellen DeGennaro recently completed her PhD in the Harvard-MIT Health Sciences and Technology program in Medical Engineering, and is a graduate of Vassar College. For her doctoral work in the Walsh lab, she usesd synthetic biology and advanced microscopy techniques​ to study genetic regulation of brain development in model organisms at the level of single cells and cellular lineages.

Email >

Marc Beaudin, MD, PhD

David Exposito-Alonso, PhD

Postdoctoral Fellow

David received his PhD in Neuroscience from King’s College London and joined the lab in 2021. His PhD work focused on molecular mechanisms regulating synaptic connectivity in the cerebral cortex. In the Walsh Lab, David is interested in investigating the functional impact of mutations associated with neurodevelopmental disorders in the assembly of cortical circuits.
Email >

August Yue Huang, PhD

August Yue Huang, PhD

Postdoctoral Fellow

August is a computational biologist whose research interest is to investigate the role of somatic mutations in aged and disease human genomes by combining bulk and single-cell sequencing techniques.

Email >

Sattar Khoshkhoo, MD

Sattar Khoshkhoo, MD

Postdoctoral Fellow

Sattar is an epilepsy fellow and postdoc in the lab who is interested in understanding the role of somatic variants in the development of human focal epilepsies.

Email >

Sonia Kim

Andrea Kriz, PhD

Postdoctoral Fellow

Andrea received her PhD in Biological and Biomedical Sciences from Harvard and joined the lab in 2021. She aims to investigate sex differences in autism at the epigenetic level.

Email >

Alisa Mo, PhD

Alisa Mo, MD, PhD

Postdoctoral Fellow

Alisa received her M.D., Ph.D. at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in Baltimore, Maryland and is currently a Child Neurology resident at Boston Children’s Hospital. She is interested in better understanding the genetic and epigenetic basis of neurodevelopmental diseases, with a particular focus on defects in chromatin-related genes.​

Email >

Diane Shao, MD, PhD

Diane Shao, MD, PhD

Postdoctoral Fellow

Diane is a postdoctoral fellow in the Walsh lab and clinical pediatric neurologist. Her interests are in novel methods for gene discovery in pediatric neurogenetic disorders, and applying single cell technology to identify and track somatic mutations that arise during brain development.

Email >

Janet Song, PhD

Daniel Snellings, PhD

Postdoctoral Fellow

Dan received his PhD in Molecular Genetics from Duke University in 2022. He is interested in studying somatic variation in repetitive regions of the genome and developing methods for high-resolution reconstruction of cellular phylogenies from human tissue. 

Email >

Janet Song, PhD

Janet Song, PhD

Postdoctoral Fellow

Janet is a postdoctoral fellow in the Walsh lab. She is interested in using high-throughput genomic and transcriptomic approaches to gain a functional understanding of human brain evolution.

Email >

Xuyu Qian, PhD

Xuyu Qian, PhD

Postdoctoral Fellow

Xuyu Qian ​received his PhD from Johns Hopkins University. His PhD work in the laboratory of Dr. Hongjun Song focused on developing methodologies for generating human induced-pluripotent stem cell-derived brain organoids as models for human brain development. In the Walsh Lab, Xuyu is interested in applying the brain organoid system to understanding the developmental mechanisms underlying human brain evolution and disorders.​

Email >

Zinan Zhou, PhD

Zinan Zhou, PhD

Postdoctoral Fellow

Zinan’s research interest is to investigate relationships between somatic mutations in human brains and neurodegenerative diseases such as amyotrophic lateral sclerosis/frontotemporal dementia and Alzheimer’s disease. He’s also interested in studying somatic mutations in heart aging and related disease conditions.

Email >

Graduate Students

Ben Finander

Irene Antony

MD/PhD Candidate

Irene is an MD-PhD candidate in the Harvard/MIT MD-PhD Program, with her MD through the HST track and PhD through the Program in Neuroscience (PiN). She joined the lab in 2023. For her PhD research, she is interested in studying early neurodevelopment and how genetic and epigenetic perturbations interact to cause intellectual disability and related neurological disorders.

Email >

Ben Finander

Liz Enyenihi

PhD Candidate

Liz is an MD-PhD student (HST) who joined the lab in 2023. Her undergrad research focused on functional characterization of rare germline variants, and she is now interested in studying genetic changes that occur during development and through the lifespan.

Email >

Ben Finander

Ben Finander

PhD Candidate

Ben Finander is a PhD student in the Biological and Biomedical Sciences (BBS) Program at Harvard. Ben joined the lab in 2022 to study how both germline and somatic mutations can impact neurodevelopment using a combination of wet lab and dry lab techniques.

Email >

Norma Hylton

Norma Hylton

MD/PhD Candidate

Norma is an MD-PhD in the Harvard/MIT MD-PhD Program and she joined the Walsh lab in 2020. During her undergrad, she studied patient-derived induced pluripotent stem cell models to investigate neuropharmacology and development and is interested in studying cortical development and how it goes awry in the context of genetic diseases and environmental insults.

Email >

Ma Chanthia

Chanthia Ma

PhD Candidate

Chanthia is an MD-PhD candidate in the Harvard/MIT MD-PhD Program, with her MD through the HST track. For her PhD research, she is interested in exploring the role of somatic mutations in neurodegenerative disease and optimizing single cell technologies for identifying such mutations.
Email >

Callison Alcott

Edward Stronge

PhD Candidate

Email >

Callison Alcott

Maya Talukdar

PhD Candidate

Maya is a MD-PhD student (HST track) pursuing her PhD in the Bioinformatics & Integrative Genomics (BIG) program at HMS. She is interested in utilizing single-cell ‘omics data and statistical genetics to better understand the genetic basis of neurodevelopment disease, especially in the context of sex differences, somatic mosaicism, and neuroinflammation

Email >

Callison Alcott

Lucy Zhao

PhD Candidate

Lucy is a PhD student (BBS) and joined the Walsh lab in 2023. She is interested in studying the genetic mechanisms of neurodevelopmental disorders such as autism spectrum disorder and schizophrenia.

Email >

Clinical Colleagues

MingHui Chen

Ming Hui Chen

Principal Investigator

Dr. Ming Hui Chen is Associate Professor of Pediatrics.  She has expertise in the cardiac manifestations of genetic brain disorders and directs a clinic for children and families with periventricular nodular heterotopia and FilaminA disease, along with a Cardiovascular Health Program for Cancer Survivors.

Sangita Choudhury

Sangita Choudhury, PhD

Principal Investigator

Sangita Choudhury, PhD. joined the lab in July 2016, as a research scientist. Her primary research interest in the Walsh lab is to investigate the genetics of human disease from a translational veiwpoint by combining her expertise in clinical medicine, basic biology, and bioinformatics.

Email >

Michael Miller, MD, PhD

Michael Miller, MD, PhD

Principle Investigator

Dr. Miller is a neuropathologist and Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School, who is also on faculty at Boston Children’s Hospital. Dr. Miller’s laboratory is interested in the role of somatic mutation and the single-cell biology of neurodegenerative diseases, and collaborates with the Walsh lab in the area of neuropathology and somatic mutation biology.

Email >

Lab Staff

Muna Al-Saffar

Muna Al-Saffar, MBChB, MSc, CBGC

Middle East Project Manager, Genetic Counselor

Muna joined the Walsh Lab team in 2007 and is the local PI for the Walsh Lab’s autism study protocols in the UAE. She has research experience in the fields of immunology and genetics through her work several countries including Iraq, Kuwait, Cananda and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

Email >

Callison Alcott

Evan Bushinsky

Research Assistant

Evan graduated from the University of Rochester with a B.S. in Environmental Health in the spring of 2022. He joined the lab in late March 2023.

Email >

Dilenny Gonzalez

Monique Chin

Administrative Coordinator

Monique joined the lab in 2020. She works as the administrative support for the Principle Investigator and Boston Children’s Hospital Chief of Genetics and Genomics, Dr. Christopher Walsh.
Email >

Dilenny Gonzalez

Urmi Ghosh

Research Assistant

Urmi graduated from the University of Delaware in 2022 with an honors BS in Neuroscience and minored in Biology. She joined the Walsh lab at the start of December in 2022. Her research interests include neurological and neurodegenerative disorders and their relationship with somatic and copy number variants.
Email >

Dilenny Gonzalez

Shelbi Gill

Research Assistant

Shelbi joined the lab in September 2022 after graduating from UMass Lowell with a B.S. in Biology. She holds an interest in mutation identification and characterization within neurodevelopmental diseases
Email >

Dilenny Gonzalez

Dilenny Gonzalez

Lab Supervisor

Email >

Dilenny Gonzalez

Eitan Goodman

Research Assistant

Eitan graduated from the University of Pennsylvania in 2023 with a BA in Neuroscience and joined the Walsh lab that Sepember. He takes interest in the genetic basis of developmental neurodegenerative disorders.
Email >

Callison Alcott

Robert Sean Hill, PhD

Lab Director

Sean joined the lab in 2001. He obtained his PhD in molecular genetics and evolution under the guidance of Ann Bucklin at the University of New Hampshire. In the Walsh Lab, he oversees human genetic sequencing and mapping projects, and bioinformatic efforts.

Email >

Abbe Lai

Abbe Lai, MS, CGC

Research Coordinator, Genetic Counselor

Abbe joined the lab in 2017. She provides clinical genetic counseling in the Brain Development and Genetics Clinic. She helps manage participation into research at the Walsh Lab and works on gene discovery projects.

Email >

Jennifer E. Neil, MS, CGC

Monica Devi Manam

Senior Bioinformatician

Monica is a Senior Bioinformatician, who joined the lab in June 2023. Prior to this, She worked on Tumor-Normal matched testing for Oncopanel at Dana Farber & Mass General Brigham’s – CAMD. At the Walsh Lab, She is interested in understanding somatic mutations and their effects in Neurogenetics

Email >

Jennifer E. Neil, MS, CGC

Jennifer E. Neil, MS, CGC

Research Coordinator, Genetic Counselor

Jen manages human subject protocols and activities, including international collaborations, and exome sequencing and variant interpretation for gene discovery projects.

Email >

Jennifer E. Neil, MS, CGC

Catherine Prasad

Research Assistant

Catherine joined the lab in August 2023 after graduating from UMass Amherst with a B.S in psychology and neuroscience. Her research interests lie in understanding the mechanisms that characterize gene mutations in neurodevelopmental disorders.

Email >

Jennifer E. Neil, MS, CGC

Ila Rosen

Research Assistant

Ila graduated recently from Boston University with a B.A. in Cellular, Molecular Biology and Genetics, and joined the lab in March 2023. Her research interests are in somatic mosaicism and neurodegenerative diseases.

Email >

Jennifer E. Neil, MS, CGC

Ashton Tillett

Research Assistant

Ashton graduated from the University of North Carolina at Pembroke in December of 2022 where he majored in Chemistry. He joined the lab shortly after. Ashton is interested in utilising human induced pluripotent stem cell models to study neurogenetic and neuroimmunological disorders.

Email >

Callison Alcott

Rebecca Yeh

Research Assistant

Email >

Lab Alumni

Post-Doctoral Fellows
Taehwan Shin, PhD (2022-2022) > Novartis
Javier Ganz, PhD (2016-2022) > Merck
Sonia Kim, PhD (2021-2022) > Stanford University
Sara Bizzotto, PhD (2016-2021) > Paris Brain Institute, Sorbonne University
Marc Beaudin, PhD (2020-2021)
Caroline Dias, MD, PhD (2016-2021) > Assistant Professor, Children’s Hospital Colorado
Almundher Al-Maawali, MD (2013-2015) > Geneticist, Sultan Qaboos University
Manal Alaamery, PhD (2010-2013) > Chairman and Department Head, King Abdullah International Medical Research Center
Kristina Allen, PhD (1993-1998) > Director, Vaccines Business Unit, Takeda Pharmaceuticals
Byoung-II Bae, PhD (2006-2015) > Assistant Professor and Principal Investigator, UConn Health
Andrew Baltus, PhD (2006-2011) > Chief Operating Officer, Addgene
Maria Chahrour, MS, PhD (2009-2014) > Assistant Professor and Principal Investigator, UT Southwestern Medical Center
Bernard Chang, MD (2002-2004) > Professor of Neurology, Harvard Medical School; Chief of Division of Epilepsy, BIDMC
Allen Chen, MD, PhD (2014-2018) > Medical Resident
Xi Chen, MD, PhD (2008-2010) > Assistant Professor of Opthamology, Duke University
Anjen Chenn, MD, PhD (1999-2002) > Associate Professor
Joseph C. Corbo, MD, PhD (1999-2002) > Associate Professor
Dwight Cordero, MD (2006-2010) > Associate Physician
Ryan Doan, PhD (2013-2019) > Assistant Professor, Harvard Medical School; Principal Investigator, Boston Children’s Hospital
Noelle Dwyer, PhD (2002-2007) > Associate Professor and Principal Investigator, University of Virginia
Yaman Eksioglu, MD, PhD (1994-1997) > Associate Professor, Emory University School of Medicine
Yuanyi Feng, PhD (1997-2006) > Associate Professor, Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences
Russell Ferland, PhD (2000-2005) > Professor and Chair of Biomedical Sciences, University of New England
Ying Geng, MD (2013-2014) > Assistant Professor, Tufts University School of Medicine
Ed Gilmore, MD, PhD (2006-2011) > Assistant Professor, Case Western Reserve University
Joseph G. Gleeson, MD (1995-1999) > Professor and Principal Investigator, UC San Diego School of Medicine
Anthony Hill, PhD (2001-2010) > Research Fellow, DKFZ German Cancer Research Center
Saumya Jamuar, MBBS, MRCPCH (2012-2014) > Head, SingHealth Duke-NUS Genomic Medicine Center; CSO, Global Gene Corp
Matthew B. Johnson, PhD (2010-2017) > Staff Scientist, Stanley Center for Psychiatric Research, Broad Institute
Seonhee Kim, PhD (2000-2007) > Associate Professor, Temple University, Lewis Katz School of Medicine
Jeehun Lee, MD, PhD (2013-2014) > Professor, Samsung Medical Center, Sungkyunkwan University School of Medicine
Maria Lehtinen, PhD (2007-2011) > Associate Professor, Harvard Medical School; Principal Investigator, Boston Children’s Hospital
Pengpeng Li, PhD (2016-2019) > Associate, 5AM Venutures
Judy Liu, MD, PhD (2003-2010) > Associate Professor and Principal Investigator, Brown University
Sofia B. Lizarraga, PhD (2003-2010) > Assistant Professor and Principal Investigator, University of South Carolina
Michael Lodato, PhD (2012-2019) > Assistant Professor and Principal Investigator, University of Massachusetts Medical School
Chiara Manzini, PhD (2006-2013) > Associate Professor, Child Health Institute of New Jersey, Rutgers-RBHS
Christine Marshall-Walker, PhD (2005-2008) > Instructor in Biology, Phillips Academy
Ganeshwaran H. Mochida, MD (1999-2008) > Assistant Professor, Harvard Medical School; Principal Investigator, Boston Children’s Hospital
Edwin S. Monuki, MD, PhD (1998-2001) > Warren L. Bostick Professor and Chair, Pathology, UC Irving School of Medicine
Eric Morrow, MD, PhD (2004-2009) > Mencoff Family Professor of Biology, Brown University
Marta Nieto Lopez, PhD (2000-2004) > Assistant Professor
Eric Olson, PhD (1997-2003) > Associate Professor
Xianhua Piao, MD, PhD (2000-2005) > Professor, UC San Francisco
Annapurna Poduri, MD, MPH (2004-2012) > Professor, Harvard Medical School; Principal Investigator, Boston Children’s Hospital
Mohamed A. Sabry, PhD (1998-2000) > Associate Professor
Christian R. Schubert, PhD (2009-2011) > Entrepreneur In Residence, Atlas Venture
Sema Sgaier, PhD (2006-2007) > Co-Founder & CEO, Surgo Ventures; Adjunct Assistant Professor, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health
Volney Sheen, MD, PhD (2000-2005) > Associate Professor, Harvard Medical School; Principal Investigator, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center
Tao Sun, PhD (2002-2005) > Associate Professor, Cornell University Weill Medical College
Ian Tietjen, PhD (2003-2006) > Research Assistant Professor, The Wistar Institute
Jessica Tsai, MD, PhD > Instructor, Harvard Medical School; Attending Physician, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Boston Children’s Hospital
Mollie Woodworth, PhD (2013-2016) > Instructor, Stanford University; Adjunct Professor, Cañada College
Seung-Yun Yoo, PhD (2003-2007) > Global Sales Strategy Team Leader, Samsung Biologics
Tim W. Yu, MD, PhD (2007-2013) > Associate Professor, Harvard Medical School; Principal Investigator, Boston Children’s Hospital
Xiaochang Zhang, PhD (2011-2017) > Assistant Professor and Principal Investigator, The University of Chicago

PhD Thesis Students
Rebeca Borges Monroy, PhD (2017-2021) > Scientist, Vertex Pharmaceuticals
Xuyu Cai, PhD (2010-2013) > Scientist, Illumina, Inc.
Teresa H. Chae, MD, PhD (1998-2002) > Ophthalmologist, Kelsey-Seybold Clinic
Michael Coulter, MD, PhD (2009-2018) > Postdoctoral Fellow, UC San Francisco
Sophie Currier, MD, PhD (2000-2004) > Psychiatrist, Aylesbury Oxford Trust at NHS
Thomas A. Deuel, MD, PhD (2000-2004) > Neurologist, Swedish Medical Center; Acting Assistant Professor, University of Washington
Gilad Evrony, MD, PhD (2009-2013) > Assistant Professor and Principal Investigator, NYU Langone Health
Wen Fan Hu, MD, PhD (2010-2014) > Ophthalmologist, University of Utah
Jeremy Fox, PhD (1995-1999) > Managing Director
Vijay Ganesh, MD, PhD (2007-2012) > Instructor in Neurology, Brigham & Women’s Hospital
Kelly Girskis, PhD (2015-2019) > Research Analyst, Tekla Capital Management
Jorge Gonzalez, PhD (1994-1999) > Executive Vice President
Divya Jayaraman, MD, PhD (2010-2015) > Resident Doctor, Boston Children’s Hospital
Jason B. Neal, MD, PhD (2003-2010) > Postdoctoral Residency Fellow
Christopher B. Reid, MD, PhD (1993-1997)
Rachel Rodin, MD, PhD > Resident in Neurology, Mass General Brigham, Harvard Medical School
Jun Shen, PhD (1999-2004) > Assistant Professor of Pathology, Brigham & Women’s Hospital, Harvard Medical School
Peter Wang, PhD (2010-2016)
Marcus Ware, MD, PhD (1995-1998) > Assistant Professor
Jenny (Yawei) Yang, MD, PhD (2007-2013) > Assistant Professor of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine, Weill Cornell Medical College
Mauro Zappaterra, MD, PhD (2005-2010) > Director of Multidisciplinary Care, Synovation Medical Group

Graduate/Medical Students
Donna Eilberg, MS (1998-2000)
Nicholai Henry, (2016-2017)
Rebeca Borges Monroy, MD/PhD (2016-2021)

Lab Staff
Kutay Deniz Atabay > PhD Candidate at Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Brenda Barry, MS, CGC > Research Coordinator/Genetic Counselor, Boston Children’s Hospital
Adria Bodell, MS > Science Teacher
Paula Delerme, MS, CGC > Clinical Genetic Counselor, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center
Kira A. Dies, ScM, CGC > Program Manager
Chloe Egan
Princess Christina Elhosary > Student, Case Western Reserve University, School of Dental Medicine
Jillian Felie > Registered Nurse, Boston Children’s Hospital
Nicole Hatem > Nursing Student, Thomas Jefferson University
Haley Hill Gardiner > Genetic Counselor
Benjamin Hills > MD, PhD Candidate at Dartmouth College
Amer Hossain > PhD Candidate at The Rockefeller University
Laura Isacco, Research Technician
Stacy Kamumbu > Medical Student at Case Western Reserve University
Connor Kenny > PhD Candidate
Christina Kourkoulis > Lab Manager, Massachusetts General Hospital
Mark LaCoursiere > Research Technician , Boston Children’s Hospital
Anh-Thu Lam > PhD Candidate, Johns Hopkins University
Bhaven Mehta, MA > PhD Candidate, Dartmouth College
Katherine Morillo >PhD Candidate, Princeton
Lariza Rento, Research Technician
Raheel Rizwan, MD, Clinical Research Specialist
Jacqueline Rodriguez, Research Technician
Aldo Rozzo, DVM, PhD, Lab Manager
Steven Ryu > PhD Candidate
Klaus Schmitz-Abe, PhD, Staff Scientist
Gabrielle Sejourne > PhD Candidate
Sarah Servattalab > Medical Student, University of Massachusetts Medical School
Caroleen S. Smiley > Sr. Administrative Associate
Christine Sunu > Medical Student, Yale School of Medicine
Allison Sussman, MPH > Registered Nurse
Dovie Watson, MD > Physician, Internal Medicine
Suet Yip, Administrative Associate
Lariza Rento, Research Assistant
Samantha Kirkham, Research Assistant
Katherine O’Kane, Research Assistant
Samantha Beck, Research Assistant
Yasmine Chahine, Research Assistant
Jack Marciano, Research Assistant
Brian Chhouk, Research Assistant

 

If you are a Walsh Lab alumnus and would like to be included on this page, please contact us!