Joel Gelernter, MD

Joel Gelernter, MD, is 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, and 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 study of genetic polymorphism and sequence variation, on a molecular level and from the perspective of population genetics. Dr Gelernter’s laboratory published genomewide 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.