Speaker Profile
Daniel H. Geschwind

Daniel H. Geschwind MD, PhD

Neurology, Psychiatry
Los Angeles, California, United States of America

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Dr. Daniel Geschwind holds the Gordon and Virginia MacDonald Distinguished Chair in Human Genetics and is a professor of Neurology and Psychiatry at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA. He is director of the Neurogenetics Program and the Center for Autism Research and Treatment (CART) and co-director of the Center for Neurobehavioral Genetics. Dr. Geschwind obtained an A.B. in psychology and chemistry at Dartmouth College and his M.D./Ph.D. at Yale School of Medicine, prior to completing his internship, residency, and postdoctoral fellowship at UCLA. He joined the UCLA faculty in 1997.

Dr. Geschwind's laboratory conducts research in three primary areas of neurogenetics: autism and language; focal neurodegenerative syndromes; and the structural/molecular basis of human cognitive specializations. Utilizing a multi-pronged approach, he studies normal human and animal model brain patterning to diseases in which language and social communication are disrupted, such as autism. His laboratory has forged important collaborations with investigators to use evolutionary comparisons to further the genetic evaluation of human brain development and patterning, including work with songbirds and non-human primates. He also provides scientific oversight for Autism Genetic Resource Exchange (AGRE), the largest collection of multiplex autism families in the world.

Dr. Geschwind has published over a hundred papers and review articles and serves as an associate editor of the Neurobiology of Disease, deputy editor of Biological Psychiatry, and is an editorial board member of several other journals including Neuron. Dr. Geschwind is active on the scientific advisory boards of the March of Dimes, Cure Autism Now Foundation (now Autism Speaks), Faculty of 1000 Medicine, and the Society for Neuroscience Program Committee. In 2004,
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