Dr. Stephen J. Haggarty is a faculty member in the Department of Neurology at Harvard Medical School and the Center for Human Genetic Research at Massachusetts General Hospital, where he is the Director of the Chemical Neurobiology Laboratory (CNL) as well as the Head of Neuropharmacology for the MGH Center for Experimental Drugs & Diagnostics in the Department of Psychiatry. Dr. Haggarty’s overall research interest is to gain a fundamental understanding of the molecular and cellular mechanisms of neuroplasticity that enable the nervous system to sense, adapt, and respond to a variety of internal and external stimuli. His long-term goal is to translate this knowledge into the discovery of novel targeted therapeutics for the treatment and prevention of neuropsychiatric disorders. Efforts in this direction include on-going experimental therapeutic trials for treatment of bipolar disorder and pre-clinical studies of novel targets targeting epigenetic mechanisms and the WNT/GSK3 pathway.

Dr. Haggarty received a B.Sc. in genetics from the University of British Columbia, Vancouver in 1997, and a Ph.D. in biochemistry in 2003 from Harvard University in the laboratory of Dr. Stuart Schreiber where he was a pioneer in the field of chemical biology and the development of cell-based screening and strategies for target identification leading to the validation of novel targets now under clinical investigation in oncology and neurodegeneration.