Joel N. Hirschhorn, MD, PhD
Concordia Professor of Pediatrics
Boston Children's Hospital
Harvard Medical School
Insititute Member
The Broad Institute
Professor and incoming Division Chief
Medicine
Boston Children's Hospital
Biography
Dr. Hirschhorn is currently the Concordia Professor of Pediatrics and Professor of Genetics at Children’s Hospital/Harvard Medical School, the Director of the Boston Children’s Hospital Center for Basic and Translational Obesity Research, and an Institute Member of the Broad Institute. He received his A.B. summa cum laude in biochemistry from Harvard College and later earned his M.D. and Ph.D. in genetics from Harvard Medical School. He completed a fellowship in pediatric endocrinology at Boston Children’s Hospital and postdoctoral training with Eric Lander at the Whitehead Institute/MIT Center for Genome Research. In 2001, he started as a faculty member at Boston Children’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School, and has been a member of the Broad Institute since its founding.
His research focuses on using human genetics and genomics to identify genes that influence common diseases and quantitative traits, including obesity and height. He leads the GIANT consortium, which has discovered nearly all of the common variants known to be associated with anthropometric traits. His laboratory uses genetic data and novel computational methods to uncover underlying biology of obesity, skeletal growth, diabetic kidney disease, and other polygenic diseases and traits. The lab also uses sequencing to understand the role of rare variation in short stature and other endocrine disorders. Dr. Hirschhorn has published over 200 papers and has received multiple awards, including the Society for Pediatrics Research E. Mead Johnson Award.