Jeremy Willsey

Jeremy Willsey, PhD is an Associate Professor in the Department of Psychiatry at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) School of Medicine and a member of the UCSF Weill Institute for Neurosciences. He has over ten years of experience in genetics and bioinformatics, with expertise in gene discovery and systems biology focused on psychiatric disorders including autism spectrum disorder (ASD), Tourette disorder (TD), obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), and attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD).

Dr. Willsey earned his PhD in Genetics from Yale University in 2014 and completed postdoctoral training in Genetics and Systems Biology at UCSF. His research focuses on identifying and leveraging rare mutations for gene discovery in psychiatric disorders, then applying systems biological approaches to understand the biological relevance of these genes and detect additional risk factors. He developed a novel approach to co-expression network analysis that identified deep layer cortical glutamatergic neurons in the midfetal prefrontal cortex as showing the strongest convergence of ASD genetic risk.

His work has contributed to the identification of more than 100 ASD-associated genes and initial characterization of the non-coding architecture of ASD. His lab has expanded to Tourette disorder, where he led work establishing the contribution of de novo variants to TD risk and identified novel TD risk genes including WWC1 and CELSR3. More recently, he has focused on identifying risk genes on chromosome X that contribute to male susceptibility in ASD, TD, and ADHD. His group has also initiated gene discovery in OCD.

Dr. Willsey co-founded the NIH-funded Psychiatric Cell Map Initiative (PCMI) at UCSF, which aims to characterize functional networks underlying psychiatric disorders. The PCMI has utilized Xenopus tropicalis to study ASD risk genes and generated protein-protein interaction networks for nearly one hundred high-confidence ASD genes.

• Autism Speaks 2015 Annual Top 10 Autism Research Papers
• UCSF 2015 CIHR Postdoctoral Fellowship
• Yale University 2014 Carolyn Slayman Prize in Genetics
• Simons Foundation 2013 SFARI Notable Papers of 2013
• Autism Speaks 2013 Top Ten Advances in Autism Research

Dr. Willsey has received significant research funding, including NIH support to recruit and genetically characterize 1,000 new Tourette disorder trios and private funding for OCD research. His work has resulted in specific testable hypotheses around prefrontal cortex development, neurogenesis, and functional convergence of ASD risk genes. His lab continues to expand its research into the molecular mechanisms underlying psychiatric disorders and their potential therapeutic implications.