Jonathan Seidman | |
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Alma mater | |
Spouse | Christine Seidman |
Children | 3 |
Scientific career | |
Institutions |
Jonathan G. Seidman is the Henrietta B. and Frederick H. Bugher Foundation Professor of Genetics at Harvard Medical School. He operates a joint lab with his wife, Christine Seidman, where they study genetic mechanisms of heart disease.
Jonathan Seidman grew up in Norwalk, Connecticut and went to high school in Ghana. [1] He studied biochemistry at Harvard University, graduating in 1971. In 1975, he completed his PhD in molecular biology at the University of Wisconsin. [1]
After doing postdoctoral research at the National Institute of Health in the lab of Philip Leder, he began working at Harvard Medical School in 1981. [1] [2] [3] He is now the Henrietta B. and Frederick H. Bugher Foundation Professor of Genetics. [4] He was a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator from 1988-2005. [5]
The Seidman lab researches the genetics involved in diseases such as hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, and was recognized for discovering the first genetic cause of congenital heart defects. [6] [7]
Beginning in 2009, the Harvard-MIT Program in Health Sciences and Technology has awarded the Seidman Prize for MD Research Mentorship in honor of him and his wife. [8]
Seidman's parents were Ann Seidman and Robert B. Seidman, respectively an economist and law and development scholar. The Seidmans were among several who established one of the first interracial planned communities on the East Coast of the US, at Village Creek in Norwalk, Connecticut in the 1950s. Jonathan Seidman and some of his four siblings were born there. The settlement exists to this day. [9] [10] The family then moved around Africa, teaching at the University of Ghana and other institutions.
Seidman met his wife, Christine Seidman, while they were students at Harvard, and they were married in 1973. They operate a joint lab at Harvard and are both founding members of MyoKardia. In 2002, they shared the Bristol-Myers Squibb Award for Distinguished Achievement in Cardiovascular Research. They have three children. [11] [12]
Susan Lee Lindquist, ForMemRS was an American professor of biology at MIT specializing in molecular biology, particularly the protein folding problem within a family of molecules known as heat-shock proteins, and prions. Lindquist was a member and former director of the Whitehead Institute and was awarded the National Medal of Science in 2010.
Howard Robert Horvitz ForMemRS NAS AAA&S APS NAM is an American biologist whose research on the nematode worm Caenorhabditis elegans was awarded the 2002 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, together with Sydney Brenner and John E. Sulston, whose "seminal discoveries concerning the genetic regulation of organ development and programmed cell death" were "important for medical research and have shed new light on the pathogenesis of many diseases".
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Christine Edry Seidman is the Thomas W. Smith Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School and director of the Cardiovascular Genetics Center at Brigham and Women's Hospital. She operates a joint lab with her husband, Jonathan Seidman, where they study genetic mechanisms of heart disease. In recognition of her scientific contributions, she was elected as a fellow of the National Academy of Sciences, American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and National Academy of Medicine. In 2024, she was elected to the American Philosophical Society.
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