NEW CO-DIRECTOR OF THE WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY IN ST LOUIS IDDRC

10/17/2022


Joseph Dougherty, PhD., Professor of Genetics and Psychiatry at Washington University in St Louis, will join Dr. Christina Gurnett, MD, PhD as the Co-Director of the Washington University Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities Research Center (IDDRC@WUSTL). He will replace John N. Constantino who has assumed the role as Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta’s first system chief of Behavioral and Mental Health, and Emory University School of Medicine professor in the Departments of Psychiatry & Behavioral Sciences and Pediatrics.

Dr. Dougherty trained in psychology at Truman State University, neuroscience at UCLA, and molecular genetics at The Rockefeller University before launching his laboratory here at Washington University in 2010 focusing on molecular and behavioral neuroscience approaches to understanding neuropsychiatric disorders. Using a combination of mouse genetics and novel transcriptomic approaches, his research group studies the impact of coding and noncoding variants in neuropsychiatric disorders and has provided important insight into the neurobiological mechanisms of rare genetic disorders, including Myt1L Syndrome and Williams Syndrome.  He is also the collaboration director of an international Simons Sex Differences Collaboration focused on understanding the molecular and genetic basis of sex bias in autism spectrum disorders.