Scientific Advisory Board
- Jay Tischfield, Ph.D., MPhil., Chairman
- Morris J. Birnbaum, M.D., Ph.D.
- Linda Brzustowicz, M.D., Ph.D.
- Howard J. Edenberg, Ph.D.
- Tara Matise, Ph.D.
- John Rice, Ph.D.
- Raymond L. White, Ph.D.
Jay Tischfield, Ph.D., MPhil., Chairman
Professor of Genetics, Rutgers University; CEO Rutgers Cell and DNA Repository (RUCDR)
Jay Tischfield is an accomplished world-class geneticist and entrepreneur currently holding the position of Duncan and Nancy MacMillan Professor of Genetics, and Chair of the Department of Genetics at Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey and Professor of Psychiatry and Pediatrics at Robert Wood Johnson School of Medicine. Dr. Tischfield is the Director of the Human Genetics Institute of New Jersey. Jay Tischfield, holds MPhil and PhD degrees from Yale University, and did postdoctoral work in Pediatrics at the University of California, San Francisco. He has served on the faculties of Case Western Reserve University, the Medical College of Georgia, the University of Cincinnati College of Medicine and Indiana University School of Medicine.
As CEO of RUCDR, he heads the management of a world-class facility for sharing cell lines, DNA, clinical data and genotype data for studies on the genetics of “complex” diseases. To this end, he is Co-Director of the National Institute of Mental Health Center for Collaborative Genetic Studies on Mental Disorders and the National Institute on Drug Abuse Center for Genetic Studies, the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases Genetics Repository and the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism Collaborative Study on the Genetics of Alcoholism Repository. He is American Board of Medical Genetics certified in two clinical sub-specialties and is a Founding Fellow of the American College of Medical Genetics.
Morris J. Birnbaum, M.D., Ph.D.
Professor of Medicine and of Cell and Development Biology, Associate Director, Institute of Diabetes, Obesity, and Metabolism, University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine
Morris Birnbaum is a recognized expert in research studies associated with Diabetes. He has published over 150 papers and is a leader in the field of insulin action and the regulation of intermediary metabolism. Morris Birnbaum received his Ph.D. in Biology and his M.D. from Brown University, the former for studies on the hormonal regulation of a key process in glucose production – hepatic glycogenolysis. He completed postdoctoral training as a Helen Hay Whitney fellow at the University of California, San Francisco, and at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in the laboratory of the late Ora Rosen. He was a member of the faculty of Harvard Medical School before moving to Pennsylvania.
Linda Brzustowicz, M.D., Ph.D.
Professor of Genetics, Rutgers University
Linda Brzustowicz is an Associate Professor in the Rutgers University Department of Genetics, and is head of the Rutgers Psychiatric Genetics Laboratory. Linda Brzustowicz's primary current focus is on complex behavioral disorders: schizophrenia, autism, and specific language impairment. Linda Brzustowicz is well known for her work on the genetic basis of schizophrenia, including the identification of a specific chromosomal location on 1q22 associated with increased risk of illness. Work on this region has recently produced evidence implicating the gene CAPON in schizophrenia etiology. She has also been involved in the recent association of the Engrailed-2 gene with risk for autism. Linda Brzustowicz's group is particularly interested in the utility of alternative phenotypes for linkage analysis, and her work on linkage findings in specific language impairment has demonstrated the importance of considering multiple diagnostic classifications. Current projects include a new study collecting a sample of families with autism and specific language impairment in different individuals, to search for a genetic overlap between these disorders. In addition to training in molecular and statistical genetics, Linda Brzustowicz is a board-certified psychiatrist.
Howard J. Edenberg, Ph.D.
Director, Center for Medical Genomics at Indiana University School of Medicine, Distinguished Professor, Chancellor’s Professor,
Professor of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology and of Medical and Molecular Genetics, Indiana University
Howard J. Edenberg is Distinguished Professor, Chancellor’s Professor, Professor of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology and of Medical and Molecular Genetics, and Director, Center for Medical Genomics at Indiana University School of Medicine. The Center for Medical Genomics provides state-of-the-art genomic infrastructure for use in studies of disease and supports cutting-edge research for studying gene expression and genetics. Howard Edenberg received his Masters and Doctorate from Stanford University and worked at Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard Medical School as a Damon Runyon Postdoctoral Fellow and a National Institute of Health Postdoctoral Fellow between 1973 and 1977. His current research focuses on the genetics of complex diseases, functional genomics, and regulation of mammalian gene expression.
Tara Matise, Ph.D.
Associate Professor, Department of Genetics, Rutgers University
Trained as a computational and statistical geneticist, Dr. Matise has considerable expertise in the application of statistical methods to identify disease loci and in the construction and integration of genetic maps. She has participated in projects to localize genes and markers for several traits including cystic fibrosis, acute myeloid leukemia, Hirschprung disease, homocystinuria, Alzheimer Disease, retinitis pigmentosa, schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, Age-related macular degeneration, neuroblastoma, extreme longevity, cognitive traits, autism and others. Dr. Matise developed the computer program MULTIMAP for rigorous automated construction of large-scale linkage and radiation hybrid maps, and applied this program for the construction of numerous maps of various density in human, rat and horse including two versions of the Human Transcript Map. Dr. Matise’s latest mapping efforts include construction of a SNP-based human linkage map with The SNP Consortium, followed by construction of a combined linkage-physical map of the human genome. Dr. Matise is currently PI of the data coordinating center for an NIH-funded multi-site study to follow up published genetic associations of several common complex traits in large, diverse cohort studies.
Raymond L. White, Ph.D.
Director of Ernest Gallo Clinic, University of California, San Francisco
Professor and Vice Chairman of the Neurology Department, University of California, San Francisco
Raymond L. White is Director of the Ernest Gallo Clinic and Research Center (EGCRC) at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF). In the 30 years since its inception, the EGCRC has grown to a staff of over 150 and occupies nearly 77,000 square feet of newly constructed space in Emeryville, CA. The EGCRC has major neuroscience laboratories in cell biology, molecular biology, biochemistry, pharmacology, neurophysiology, behavioral pharmacology and physiology, and invertebrate, mouse and human genetics. Raymond White received his PhD in microbiology from Massachusetts Institute of Technology. As a member of the National Academy of Sciences, Raymond White is recognized for conceiving the use of natural genetic variations, or polymorphisms, to map disease genes and for demonstrating that tumors can form as a result of a two-step process: inheriting a defective copy of a gene and losing the normal copy. He discovered the genes that cause an inherited colon cancer and neurofibromatosis, a disease in which tumors form in the nervous system, skin and other organs. His current research focuses on identifying the functional consequences of genomic variation, correlating a phenotypic characteristic with any one of these variants by identifying individuals carrying the same variant and determining whether there are phenotypic characteristics held in common. More specifically, he is now pursuing genetic variants that may create susceptibility to alcohol and substance abuse, or create alterations in the therapeutic response to new medications and treatments.
John Rice, Ph.D.
Professor of Mathematics in Psychiatry and Professor of Biostatistics, Washington University
John Rice is a Professor of Mathematics in Psychiatry with a joint appointment in the Division of Biostatistics and the Department of Genetics at Washington University School of Medicine. John Rice’s current research interests include the collection and analysis of linkage and family data on the affective disorders, alcoholism and nicotine dependence as well as methodological development in genetic epidemiology. He is the Co-Principal Investigator for the National Institute for Mental Health Contract "Center for Genetic Studies" and a Co-Principal Investigator for the National Institute on Drug Abuse Center. John Rice has extensive experience with multisite collaborative studies collecting large amounts of genetic data and preparing the necessary components for their analysis. John Rice has a long history of methodologic contribution in the area of quantitative methods for genetic analysis. For the past few years he has worked on the analysis of single nucleotide polymorphism data and the characterization of the exact linkage disequilibrium in various populations.