Christopher A. Walsh

Christopher A. Walsh is Bullard Professor of Pediatrics and Neurology at Harvard Medical School, Chief of the Division of Genetics and Genomics at Boston Children's Hospital, and an Investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. His research laboratory at the Manton Center for Orphan Disease Research and F.M. Kirby Neurobiology Center focuses on the genetic basis of human cerebral cortical development and associated disorders.

Dr. Walsh completed his MD and PhD degrees at the University of Chicago, neurology residency at Massachusetts General Hospital, and postdoctoral training at Harvard in Genetics. He has held the Bullard Professorship since 1999 and joined Children's Hospital as Chief of Genetics in 2006. His educational background includes undergraduate studies at Bucknell University (1978), PhD in Neurobiology from the University of Chicago (1983), and medical training at the Pritzker School of Medicine (1985).

Dr. Walsh's research spans multiple areas of neurogenetics and brain development. His lab pioneered the analysis of clonal somatic mutations as causes of disease and has revealed roles for somatic mutations in pediatric focal epilepsy, adult temporal lobe epilepsy, autism spectrum disorders, and schizophrenia. He has identified more than three-dozen human disease genes over 20 years and analyzed rates of somatic mutations in normal brain cells, revealing their accumulation with age in single human neurons. His work has expanded into brain aging and degenerative diseases, earning the Pignolo Award for Aging Research from the University of Pennsylvania in 2018. The lab is particularly well-suited for projects on somatic mutation across human tissues due to their longstanding interest in somatic mutation in human brain, cell lineage in human brain, and innovative genomic technologies.

Dr. Walsh's recent publications (2024-2025) demonstrate a strong focus on somatic mutations, brain development, and neurological disorders using cutting-edge single-cell and spatial genomics technologies. His work increasingly examines cellular heterogeneity in the brain, how somatic mutations impact neurological function across disorders including autism, epilepsy, and neurodegenerative conditions, and the evolutionary aspects of human brain development.

Dr. Walsh has received numerous prestigious awards including the Jacob Javits Award, Kavli Prize in Neuroscience, Gruber Prize in Neuroscience, and election to the National Academy of Sciences. His work has been recognized by multiple societies including the American Neurological Association, American Association of Physicians, National Academy of Medicine, and American Association for the Advancement of Sciences. Recent honors include the Jacob Javits Distinguished Investigator Award (2024), election to the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters (2022), and the Kavli Prize in Neuroscience (2022).

Dr. Walsh has been deeply involved in training the next generation of researchers, having mentored over 50 MDs, PhDs, and MD/PhDs and more than 20 pre-doctoral students. Most of these trainees continue to be involved in medical research after leaving his lab, many starting their own labs. He previously served as Director of the Harvard-MIT MD-PhD training program for three years and has been active on many committees for this program for 20 years. His current research is supported by multiple grants including an HHMI Investigator award (10/01/02-10/31/31), several NIH R01 grants, and funding from the Paul Allen Frontiers Group, Simons Foundation, and John Templeton Foundation.

Dr. Walsh leads the Walsh Laboratory within the Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities Research Center at Boston Children's Hospital. His lab continues to push boundaries in understanding how somatic mutations contribute to both normal brain function and neurological disorders across the lifespan, with recent work expanding into studying the evolution of the human brain through the Center for the Study of Human Brain Evolution funded by the Paul Allen Frontiers Group.