MIRECC / CoE

VISN 1 MIRECC Staff: Joel Gelernter, M.D.

Joel Gelernter, M.D.

Dr. Gelernter received his Doctorate of Medicine in 1983 from SUNY-Downstate Medical School in New York. He is a Foundations Fund Professor of Psychiatry, Professor of Genetics and Neurobiology, and Director of the Division of Human Genetics in Psychiatry at the Yale University School of Medicine. The research focus of Dr. Gelernter's laboratory is genetics of psychiatric illness. Dr. Gelernter studies a range of behavioral phenotypes, including: cocaine, opiates, nicotine, cannabis, and alcohol dependence; panic and other anxiety disorders; schizophrenia; and affective disorders. In addition, he studies a range of intermediate phenotypes such as neuroimaging measures and basic issues in population genetics. The overall approach involves study of genetic polymorphism and other kinds of sequence variation, both on a molecular level and from the perspective of population genetics. Current studies include NIH (NIDA and NIAAA) funded studies of cocaine, opioid, alcohol, and nicotine dependence genetics. Methods include association, linkage, genome-wide association, and full exome and full genome sequencing. Dr. Gelernter and his colleagues have ongoing collaborations with investigators at the Chulalongkorn Faculty of Medicine in Bangkok, Thailand to study genetics of substance dependence, and a collaborative training program with that institution to train Thai investigators in substance dependence genetics at Yale University.

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