SPARKing New Insight into Autism

SPARKing New Insight into Autism

Webinars / SPARKing New Insight into Autism

Overview

Wendy Chung is the principle investigator of SPARK (Simons Foundation Powering Autism Research for Knowledge), a research study including over 200,000 individuals with autism and over 250,000 of their family members that has been ongoing for the past 10 years. With the engagement of the autism community and researchers, significant progress has been made to understand the genetic contributions to autism and associated conditions and to understand the changing needs and manifestations of autism over the life course. SPARK serves as an important vehicle to better understand the complexity of autism and develop and test solutions to help individuals with autism achieve their full potential.

About the Speaker

Wendy Chung M.D., PH.D.
Wendy Chung M.D., PH.D.

Wendy Chung, MD, PhD, is Chief of the Department of Pediatrics of Boston Children’s Hospital, Mary Ellen Avery Professor of Pediatrics at Harvard Medical School, and President of the Children’s Hospital Pediatric Associates. She is the PI of GUARDIAN (Genomic Uniform-screening Against Rare Diseases in All Newborns), a study that explores the utility of whole-genome sequencing for screening newborns for rare and, for the most part, treatable genetic conditions.

 

Dr. Chung joined Boston Children’s from Columbia University Irving Medical Center/NewYork-Presbyterian Morgan Stanley Children’s Hospital, where she served as Chief of the Division of Clinical Genetics within the Department of Pediatrics, the Associate Director for Education at the Herbert Irving Comprehensive Cancer Center, the Medical Director for the Columbia Genetic Counseling Graduate Program, and the Precision Medicine Resource Leader at the Irving Institute. Dr. Chung was also a Kennedy Family Professor of Pediatrics in Medicine who leads the Chung Laboratory at Columbia University Medical Center.

 

With more than 20 years of experience as a clinical and molecular geneticist, Dr. Chung has directed many National Institutes of Health-funded research programs. She was the tenured Kennedy Family Professor of Pediatrics and Medicine and currently serves as the Director of Clinical Research at the Simons Foundation Autism Research Initiative (SFARI), where she leads two large autism and neurodevelopmental disorder cohorts, SPARK and Searchlight. She was also the Director of the Pediatric Neuromuscular Network Molecular Core and the New York Obesity Center Molecular Genetics Core.

 

Dr. Chung received her BA in biochemistry and economics from Cornell University, her MD from Cornell University Medical College, and her PhD in genetics from Rockefeller University.

1:00 p.m. EST, Wednesday, Feb 17, 2027

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