Christopher Walsh

Christopher Walsh is Chief of Genetics and Genomics and an Investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute at Boston Children's Hospital, and Bullard Professor of Pediatrics and Neurology at Harvard Medical School. He completed his PhD and MD at The University of Chicago and neurology residency at Massachusetts General Hospital. After postdoctoral training with Conie Cepko in the Department of Genetics at Harvard, in 1993 he became Assistant Professor of Neurology at Beth Israel-Deaconess Medical Center, becoming the Bullard Professor in 1999. He moved to Boston Children's Hospital in 2006.

Dr. Walsh's research uses genetics to understand the development and function of the human cerebral cortex. His lab has identified dozens of neurological disease genes that affect the developing brain, resulting in epilepsy, intellectual disability, autism spectrum disorders, and other conditions. Recent work has revealed clonal mutations that occur during development—present in some cells but not all cells--as important causes of human epilepsy, autism, and schizophrenia. His lab developed new technologies revealing that any given human neuron has hundreds to thousands of mutations relative to the neuron next to it, increasing with age--despite the fact that neurons do not undergo cell division—and accumulating faster in age-related diseases associated with degeneration and dementia. He is an elected member of the National Academy of Medicine, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the National Academy of Sciences. He shared the Gruber Neuroscience Prize in 2021, and the Kavli Neuroscience Prize in 2022. To learn more visit here.

Talk Title: You contain multitudes: somatic mutation in human brain