Joan O’Brien, M.D., is Director of the Penn Medicine Center for Genetics of Complex Disease and Chairman Emeritus of the UPenn Ophthalmology Department. With over 25 years of genetic research experience, Dr. O’Brien has authored more than 275 publications. Elected to the National Academy of Medicine, one of the highest honors a physician can receive, Dr. O’Brien has received numerous awards, including the AAO’s Secretariat Award, the USC Keck School of Medicine’s Laureate Award, and the Retina Research Foundation’s Gertrude D. Pyron Award for Lifetime Research Achievement.
She is currently PI of the $17.85M NEI-funded POAAGG Study, which has enrolled 10,255 Black individuals from Philadelphia, with GWAS data on 7765, whole-exome data on 8500, and whole-genome data on 100. Dr. O’Brien is expanding the scope of her research beyond ocular diseases to include other diseases that disproportionately affect Black individuals.
BA Middlebury College, Middlebury, VT, 1979. MD Dartmouth Medical School, Hanover, NH, 1986
