Joel Hirschhorn is the first incumbent of the Concordia Professorship in Pediatrics at Boston Children’s Hospital.
After earning an undergraduate degree in biochemistry from Harvard College, Hirschhorn received a doctorate in genetics and a medical degree at Harvard Medical School. He completed his clinical training, internship, residency and postdoctoral fellowship at Children’s. In 2001, Hirschhorn started his own laboratory at Children’s and currently directs the Center for Basic Translational Obesity Research. He is a senior associate member and codirector of the Broad Institute Metabolism Initiative.
Hirschhorn’s lab at Children’s focuses on understanding the genetic basis of human height and weight, as well as the study of asthma, diabetic kidney disease and the timing of puberty. Most recently, his lab has identified multiple new associations among recently identified loci linked with obesity and height. Hirschhorn has led, or helped lead, the discovery of more than 200 genetic loci associated with polygenic traits.
In addition to his lab work, Hirschhorn heads the Genetic Investigation of Anthropometric Traits consortium representing 200 institutions. This international consortium aims to identify all relevant genes involved in modulating weight, height and more complex measures of obesity.
Hirschhorn also performs studies in populations of African ancestry, and has developed methods to perform imputation in populations formed by gene flow between two or more genetically distinct populations.
The professorship was established by multiple donors and will be named for Frederick Lovejoy, the William Berenberg Distinguished Professor of Pediatrics at HMS, upon his retirement.
