Speaker Profile
Ph.D., Director, Harvard
Biography
Michael Talkowski received his Ph.D. in human genetics and trained in neurodevelopmental genomics as a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard Medical School, Massachusetts General Hospital and the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard. His research program focuses on understanding the genetic etiology of disorders affecting prenatal, neonatal, and early childhood development, particularly autism and human developmental disorders. His group integrates molecular and computational approaches to explore the consequences of genomic variation with a particular interest in the relationship between genome structure and function and how this contributes to human disease, particularly neurodevelopmental disorders.
Talkowski is currently the director of the Center for Genomic Medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital and a professor in the Department of Neurology at Harvard Medical School. He is also an institute member at the Broad Institute, where he co-leads the Broad Structural Variation Group and the NeuroDevelopmental Variability Initiative. He also co-directs several international consortia related to autism, fetal genomics and large-scale reference resources, including the genome aggregation database (gnomAD) and the All of Us Research Program.
Session Abstract – PMWC 2027 Silicon Valley
Track Chair:
Wendy Chung, Boston Children's / Harvard
PMWC Award Ceremony
• Wendy Chung, Boston Children's / Harvard (Pioneer)
• Eric Lander, Broad Institute (Pioneer)
Featured Speakers
• Wendy Chung, Boston Children's / Harvard
• Eric Lander, Broad Institute
• Zhanzhi (Mike) Hu, Project GUARDIAN / Columbia
• Tippi MacKenzie, UCSF
• Ryan Taft, Genetic Alliance
• Heidi Cope, RTI International
• Michele Caggana, NY State DOH Wadsworth Center
• Elad Ziv, UCSF
• Scott Grosse, University of Minnesota
• Mike Talkowski, Mass General / Harvard
• F. Sessions Cole, WashU
• Lee Hood, Phenome Health / ISB
• Trey Ideker, UC San Diego
• Ralph Snyderman, Duke
• Craig Mundie, Mundie & Associates
• George Church, Harvard
Beyond the Exome: Solving Undiagnosed Disease
The next layer of rare-disease diagnosis beyond standard sequencing.
Population Genomic Screening
From newborn sequencing to implementation, evidence, economics, and equity.
Structural Variants & Long Reads
Solving cases missed by conventional sequencing.
Launching the Human Phenome Initiative
From genome to phenome as a global health infrastructure challenge.
Data-Driven Health
AI, longitudinal data, and personalized clinical medicine.
Engineering the Future of Health
Genomes, cells, and engineering biology as precision medicine moves upstream.
PMWC Hall of Impact
Previous Speakers Include
Nobel laureates, technology founders, regulators, CEOs and scientific pioneers who have taken the PMWC stage.
