Lars Bertram MD, PhD

Lars Bertram graduated from medical school at Ruhr University Bochum, Germany, in 1997, and began his clinical training at the Alzheimer Centre of the Klinikum rechts der Isar in Munich. In 1999, he joined the Genetics and Aging Research Unit at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) and was appointed to the faculty of Harvard Medical School as Assistant Professor of Neurology in 2004. In 2008, Dr. Bertram moved back to Germany where he founded the Neuropsychiatric Genetics Group in the Department of Vertebrate Genomics at the Max-Planck Institute for Molecular Genetics (MPIMG) in Berlin. In 2014, he was appointed Professor of Genome Analytics in the Medical Faculty at the University of Lübeck, Germany, where he heads the Lübeck Interdisciplinary Platform for Genome Analytics (LIGA). Since 2013, Dr. Bertram also holds an appointment as Reader in Neurogenetics at the School of Public Health, Faculty of Medicine, Imperial College London, UK. Scientifically, Dr. Bertram’s expertise lies in the mapping and characterization of complex disease genes, predominantly in the field of neuropsychiatric diseases and aging. In addition to his laboratory work, Dr. Bertram has pioneered the development of bioinformatics approaches that systematically and quantitatively integrate large-scale genetic data for phenotypes such as Alzheimer’s disease, schizophrenia, Parkinson’s disease, and multiple sclerosis. Currently, he is leading several projects that apply “next-generation” genomics and epigenomics technologies to genetically complex traits. Dr. Bertram has co-authored over 150 peer-reviewed scientific articles, the majority of which have been published in the leading journals of basic science, genetics, and medicine. During his career, he received numerous awards and honors, e.g. from the Harvard Center for Neurodegeneration and Repair, the ERASMUS Foundation, the National Alliance on Research in Depression and Schizophrenia (NARSAD), the Alzheimer Research Forum, and the Hans & Ilse Breuer Stiftung for Alzheimer’s Research.