Mark Daly

Biography
Mark Daly is an institute member and co-director of the Program in Medicaland Population Genetics at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, where heleads many large-scale genome sequencing studies in autism and inflammatorybowel disease. He is also the founding chief of the Analytic andTranslational Genetics Unit (ATGU) at Massachusetts General Hospital andassociate professor at the Harvard Medical School. His research hashistorically focused on the development and application of statisticalmethods for the discovery and interpretation of genetic variationresponsible for complex human disease, and with the creation of the ATGU,he and other core faculty are focused on the interpretation of genomesequence and the use of genome information in clinical settings.Daly wasappointed director of the Institute of Molecular Medicine Finland (FIMM) atthe University of Helsinki from February of 2018 through April 2023 whilemaintaining his lab in Boston. After that, he returned to Boston full-timeand now maintains an affiliate position as a researcher at the Universityof Helsinki. FIMM is a translational research institute focusing on cancer,digital diagnostics, genetics, and epidemiology and is home to landmarkefforts such as the FinnGen Project.In addition to developing computationaland statistical methods that can be broadly applied, Dalys group hasseveral primary medical genetics research foci. He has an extensiveresearch program in neuropsychiatric geneticsparticularly in autism,schizophrenia, and ADHDand has led large-scale genome-wide associationstudies (GWAS) and exome sequencing efforts in this area. Dalys lab and BenNeale's lab together serve as an analytic hub for the Psychiatric GWASConsortium, an international consortium leading the largest collaborativeGWAS studies in five major psychiatric disorders. Daly also has alongstanding effort in the mapping of genes for Crohns disease andulcerative colitis, through which he helped found and lead an internationaleffort that has identified more than 150 genetic risk factors and, incollaboration with Ramnik Xaviers group, pursues the functionalinterpretation and clinical ramifications of these continued gene discoveryefforts. Along with Heidi Rehm, he is co-PI of the gnomAD project and iscommitted to ensuring the output of all ATGU genomic research is maximallyaccessible and useful to the clinical and research communities.Dalyreceived his B.S. in physics from MIT and his Ph.D. in human genetics fromLeiden University, Netherlands.