2015 AAAS Annual Meeting (12-16 February 2015)

February 12 - 16, 2015

David Altshuler: Human Genetics and Drug Discovery

David Altshuler Executive Vice President of Global Research and Chief Scientific Officer Vertex Pharmaceuticals Dr. David Altshuler is a human geneticist and clinical endocrinologist whose research focuses on human genetic variation and its applications to disease and drug discovery. He recently left the Broad Institute and Harvard Medical School to become Executive Vice President of Global Research and Chief Scientific Officer at Vertex Pharmaceuticals. A founding core member of the Broad Institute, he was until recently its deputy director, chief academic officer, and director of its Program in Medical and Population Genetics. He was a leader of the SNP Consortium, International HapMap Project, and 1000 Genomes Project – public-private partnerships that created public maps of human genome sequence variation. He developed tools and methods to enable the systematic study of human genetic variation for its role in common diseases, and discovered and studied gene variants that influence type 2 diabetes and other diseases. He is a member of the U.S. Institute of Medicine and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the Association of American Physicians, and the American Society for Clinical Investigation. He has served on the advisory council of the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases, the strategy committee of the Wellcome Trust, and the Board of Reviewing Editors at Science, and the Board of Directors of the American Society for Human Genetics. He received the Curt Stern Award from the American Society of Human Genetics, the Outstanding Scientific Achievement Award from the American Diabetes Association, and the Roy O. Greep Award from the Endocrine Society. Dr. Altshuler was named a Champion of Change by the U.S. White House for his leadership role in creating the Global Alliance for Genomics and Health. He received his bachelor’s degree from MIT, Ph.D. from Harvard University, and medical degree from Harvard Medical School, and conducted clinical training in medicine and endocrinology at Massachusetts General Hospital.