
Neil Risch
'Neil Risch' is an
American human
geneticist and professor at the
University of California, San Francisco (UCSF). Risch is the Lamond Family Foundation Distinguished Professor in Human Genetics and Director of the Institute for Human Genetics and Professor of Epidemiology and Biostatistics at
UCSF. Known for his work on numerous genetic diseases including
torsion dystonia, Risch emphasizes the links between
population genetics and clinical application, believing that understanding human population history and disease susceptibility go hand in hand
[1].
After mapping torsion dystonia by
linkage disequilibrium (LD) analysis he found it was genetically dominant and was a
founder mutation. Other work has focused on the genetic basis of
Parkinson's disease,
hemochromatosis,
multiple sclerosis,
diabetes,
autism,
epilepsy and
hypertension.
Awards
Risch is the 2004 recipient of the Curt Stern Award from the American Society of Human Genetics. He has held faculty appointments at
Columbia,
Yale, and
Stanford Universities, and is a graduate of the biomathematics program at the
University of California at Los Angeles.
He has been described as “''the'' statistical geneticist of our time”
[2]
References
1. Risch et al. 2002
2. The Whole Side of It—An Interview with Neil Risch, Gitschier, Jane, , , PLoS Genetics, 2005
External links
★
UCSF website homepage