Mark Joseph Daly is Director of the Finnish Institute for Molecular Medicine (FIMM) at the

University of Helsinki The University of Helsinki ( fi, Helsingin yliopisto, sv, Helsingfors universitet, abbreviated UH) is a public research university located in Helsinki, Finland since 1829, but founded in the city of Turku (in Swedish ''Åbo'') in 1640 as the ...

, a Professor of Genetics at

Harvard Medical School Harvard Medical School (HMS) is the graduate medical school of Harvard University and is located in the Longwood Medical Area of Boston, Massachusetts. Founded in 1782, HMS is one of the oldest medical schools in the United States and is consi ...

, Chief of the Analytic and Translational Genetic Unit at Massachusetts General Hospital, and a member of the

Broad Institute The Eli and Edythe L. Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard (IPA: , pronunciation respelling: ), often referred to as the Broad Institute, is a biomedical and genomic research center located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. The institu ...

of MIT and Harvard. In the early days of the Human Genome Project, Daly helped develop the genetic model by which

linkage disequilibrium In population genetics, linkage disequilibrium (LD) is the non-random association of alleles at different loci in a given population. Loci are said to be in linkage disequilibrium when the frequency of association of their different alleles is h ...

could be used to map the haplotype structure of the human genome. In addition, he developed statistical methods to find associations between genes and disorders such as Crohn's disease, inflammatory bowel disease, autism and

schizophrenia Schizophrenia is a mental disorder characterized by continuous or relapsing episodes of psychosis. Major symptoms include hallucinations (typically hearing voices), delusions, and disorganized thinking. Other symptoms include social wit ...

. Daly is considered a pioneer in the field of human genetics, and is amongst the most cited scientists in the field, and one of the top 100 most cited scientists of all time. He was elected to the

National Academy of Medicine The National Academy of Medicine (NAM), formerly called the Institute of Medicine (IoM) until 2015, is an American nonprofit, non-governmental organization. The National Academy of Medicine is a part of the National Academies of Sciences, Eng ...

in 2017.

Education

Daly studied physics at

MIT The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a private land-grant research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Established in 1861, MIT has played a key role in the development of modern technology and science, and is one of the m ...

, although he initially wanted to become a lawyer or poker player, he joined Eric Lander as a freshman. Mark continued to work with Lander, before eventually receiving his PhD from Leiden University in 2004.

Research

Daly trained with Eric Lander at the Whitehead Institute, and most of his initial efforts were to map haplotypes across the human genome. During his time there, his team developed MapMaker, GeneHunter, Haploview, PLINK, and GATK. Collectively these tools have received over 30,000 citations. As genome sequencing has become cheaper, his group works on developing statistical methods to implicate genetic mutations in neuropsychiatric diseases.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Daly, Mark Living people 1967 births American geneticists Genetic epidemiologists Harvard Medical School faculty Massachusetts Institute of Technology School of Science alumni Leiden University alumni American expatriates in Finland Members of the National Academy of Medicine