Jacob Vorstman
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Administrative Coordinator: Elaine Chang, elainec.chang@sickkids.ca Research Synopsis With his research team, Dr. Vorstman studies the relationships between genes and behaviour, in particular, how genetic variants can contribute to neurodevelopmental disorders such as autism, intellectual disability and schizophrenia. Together with his team he initiated a multidisciplinary clinic for children with genetic risk variants associated with a psychiatric or neurodevelopmental outcome. This clinic, called DAGSY (Developmental Assessment of Genetically Susceptible Youth) recently received considerable funding from CIHR and NIMH, allowing the integration of research and clinical service. His ambition is to further insights into the genetic architecture underlying neurodevelopmental disorders as well as to improve methods to measure the associated phenotypes. Regarding the latter, he developed a smartphone application, in equal partnership with Professor Kas, which allows 24/7 objective registrations of social and communicative behaviours of individuals. This application, BeHapp, has received substantial funding and is at present implemented in several ongoing studies generating the first data of this kind. |