Jonathan L. Haines, PhD

Jonathan L. Haines, PhD, is an internationally recognized genetic epidemiologist and computational biologist. He is credited with the discovery or co-discovery of more than 20 causal and 300 asso­ci­ated genetic loci in Alzheimer’s disease and age-related macular degeneration (AMD), among other conditions.

He is recognized for early field-defining breakthroughs in the 1980s and 1990s, followed by a steady cadence of discoveries based in novel conceptual and computational approaches. While his work focuses in neurodegenerative and ocular conditions, the breakthroughs applied in those clinical areas, are recognized as game changers that informed human genetic research writ large.

Dr. Haines is noted for his leadership in co-founding and co-directing several international consortia essential in compiling and analyzing vast datasets required to arrive at these discoveries. He and his colleague Margaret Pericak-Vance, PhD, have collaborated for more than 30 years, exemplifying team research in a field that requires long-term, global collaboration across dozens of institutions, and hundreds of professionals representing multiple disciplines. This duo and their larger teams are noted for their commitment to diversity both in recruitment of research participants and in fostering diversity among those who formulate and direct the research to ensure that the field of human genetics benefits all.

Dr. Haines is a co-founder and now a leader of several international research consortia including the International Genetics of Alzheimer’s Disease Project (IGAP), the NIA Alzheimer Disease Sequencing Project (ADSP), the Collaborative for Alzheimer’s Disease Research (CADRE), and the International Age-related Macular Degeneration Genomics Consortium (IAMDGC), among others.

He advises at the highest levels in the research community, serving on dozens of advisory councils. He currently serves on the Scientific Advisory Panel to the NIH/NHGRI Sequencing Program, and recently served on the NIH/National Human Genome Research Advisory Council.

Dr. Haines has led and taught through many academic enterprises, including Harvard Medical School, and Vanderbilt University School of Medicine. He currently holds an endowed chair as the Mary W. Shel­don M.D. Pro­fes­sor of Genomic Sci­ences, and also serves as the Chair of the Depart­ment of Population and Quantitative Health Sciences in the School of Medicine at Case Western Reserve University (CWRU). The department is the administrative home to the Cleveland Institute for Computational Biology, which he founded and leads.

Find his biosketch here.