CHI Annual Gould Lecture Series | Guest Speaker: Christopher A. Walsh, MD, PhD

Christopher A. Walsh, MD, PhD

Investigator, Howard Hughes Medical Institute
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

Christopher A. Walsh is Bullard Professor of Pediatrics and Neurology at Harvard Medical School, Chief of the Division of Genetics and Genomics at Boston Children's Hospital, and an Investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. He completed his M.D. and Ph.D. degrees at the University of Chicago. After a neurology residency and chief residency at Massachusetts General Hospital, he completed a research fellowship in genetics at Harvard Medical School. His research has been recognized by the Perl-UNC Neuroscience award, the Gruber Neuroscience Prize, the Kavli Neuroscience Prize, and election to the National Academy of Medicine, the National Academy of Sciences, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.  

The Walsh lab studies the development of the human cerebral cortex, from undifferentiated stem cells to mature neurons. Studies of families with genetic disorders of human brain development have allowed us to identify of dozens of genes essential for cortical development, and associated with conditions like epilepsy, intellectual disability and autism spectrum disorders. These genes control stem cell proliferation, resulting in a small brain; neuronal migration, resulting in a disorganized brain, and many other processes. Some of these genes essential for human cerebral cortical development were altered over the course of human evolution as well, helping to drive the unique features of the human brain.