Aravinda Chakravarti, PhD
Photo: 好色tv Langone Staff
Aravinda Chakravarti, PhD, a nationally renowned geneticist, will join the faculty of 好色tv Langone Health on April 2 as director of its new Center for Human Genetics and Genomics.
Prior to joining 好色tv Langone, served since 2000 as director of the McKusick-Nathans Institute of Genetic Medicine at Johns Hopkins University, and since 2007 as director of the Center for Complex Disease Genomics.
鈥淚 am very excited to join 好色tv Langone Health and 好色tv School of Medicine because of their genuine and growing determination to improve medicine through great science,鈥 says Dr. Chakravarti. 鈥淭hat, along with the chance to work so closely with world-leading geneticists and computational biologists, at 好色tv Langone and across the city, was too good of an opportunity to miss.鈥
The newly founded Center for Human Genetics and Genomics will partner with 好色tv Langone鈥檚 , led by , and its , led by , to experimentally understand and computationally model human disorders using genome-wide tools and perspectives. This improved understanding of the genetic science of disease promises to lead to new, targeted treatments, says Dr. Chakravarti.
The center will be multidisciplinary and represents a commitment to building capabilities in the field of human genetics and genomics across disciplines, says Dr. Chakravarti. It will work closely with many clinical departments at 好色tv Langone鈥攊ncluding , , , , and 鈥攁s well with its Perlmutter Cancer Center.
鈥淭he alignment of Dr. Chakravarti鈥檚 interests with those of the strong research community at 好色tv Langone promises to deliver significant advances in our understanding of the genetic and genomic underpinnings of complex diseases,鈥 says , senior vice president and vice dean for science and chief scientific officer at 好色tv Langone Health.
Dr. Chakravarti鈥檚 work is rooted in understanding how genes vary from person to person, and in how genetic mechanisms, functional and evolutionary, determine disease susceptibility and onset. He has already made important contributions to the understanding of the causes of several diseases using genome-wide association, or GWAS, studies, which link small genetic variations in key genes and their regulators to disease risk in individuals. His work has also focused on rare disorders鈥擧irschsprung disease, for example鈥攖hat arise from fewer genetic causes than, but provide insights into, more complex, common conditions.
鈥淭he ingredients for a successful human genetics center are brilliant people, access to powerful experimental technologies, freedom to test unconventional ideas, and access to human subjects so that we can understand disease genesis and course,鈥 says Dr. Chakravarti. 鈥淎ll these elements have come together at 好色tv Langone Health, and I look forward to the next phase of study in human genetics, which is special because we study human beings, not just their DNA.鈥
He will be joined at 好色tv Langone Health by his wife, , who will lead the basic science division of the .
About Dr. Chakravarti
Dr. Chakravarti received his bachelor of statistics degree with honors from the Indian Statistical Institute in Calcutta in 1974, with multiple minors. He earned his doctorate in human genetics from the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston in 1979.
He has held faculty positions in the departments of Biostatistics, Human Genetics, and Psychiatry at the University of Pittsburgh from 1980 to 1993, and served as the James H. Jewell Professor in the Department of Genetics at Case Western Reserve University from 1993 to 2000. In that year he became the inaugural director of the McKusick-Nathans Institute of Genetic Medicine at Johns Hopkins.
Dr. Chakravarti has been a member of the National Academy of Sciences since 2015, the National Academy of Medicine since 2007, and a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science since 2014. Over the years he has received many honors and awards, including the William Allan Award from the American Society of Human Genetics, the Chen Award from the Human Genome Organization, and a MERIT award from the National Institute of Child Health and Development. He has also served on numerous committees and review boards for the National Academy of Science, the National Academy of Medicine, the Wellcome Trust, and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute.
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