Joel Gelernter MD

Joel Gelernter, MD, is the Foundations Fund Professor of Psychiatry and Professor of Genetics and Neurobiology, and Director, Division of Human Genetics (Psychiatry), at the Yale University School of Medicine.

The research focus of his laboratory is genetics of psychiatric illness – phenotypes including cocaine, opioid, nicotine, cannabis, and alcohol dependence, posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), depression, panic, and other anxiety disorders. He also studies a range of related phenotypes, including pharmacogenomics, and basic issues in population and complex trait genetics. The overall approach involves the study of genetic polymorphism and sequence variation on a molecular level and from the perspective of population genetics. Dr Gelernter’s laboratory published genome-wide association studies (GWAS) for cocaine, cannabis, and opioid dependence, PTSD, alcohol dependence, nicotine dependence, and several related traits. All of these studies have resulted in the identification of novel risk loci.