Jacob Vorstman

Administrative Coordinator: Elaine Chang, elainec.chang@sickkids.ca  

Research Synopsis

Dr. Vorstman studies the relationships between genes and behaviour, in particular, how genetic variants can contribute to neurodevelopmental conditoins such as autism, intellectual disability and schizophrenia. With his work he tries to address the question of translation: how can basic scientific research concretely improve patient mental health care?

Together with his team he initiated a multidisciplinary clinic for children with genetic risk variants associated with psychiatric and/or neurodevelopmental outcomes, called DAGSY (Developmental Assessment of Genetically Susceptible Youth). Furthermore, he co-developed (with Professor Kas, University of Groningen) a smartphone application for the measurement of social and communicative behaviors, which is currently implemented in several studies generating the first data of this kind. He also has received funding to examines ways to improve our current ability to reliably extract mental health diagnoses from large numbers of electronic health records using natural language models. 

Taken together his work aims to further insights into the early trajectory of neurodevelopmental and psychiatric conditions. The focus on individual identifiable genetic vulnerability, early biomarkers as well as the use of digital phenotyping and large scale language models all embody his ambition to promote Precision Child Health strategies in neurodevelopment and child psychiatry.