Hakon Hakonarson is Founding Director of the Center for Applied Genomics at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP) and Professor of Pediatrics at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania.

His research applies large-scale genomics to the study of complex paediatric diseases, combining biobanks, genotyping, sequencing and clinical data to identify risk variants and biological pathways. His work has spanned conditions including autism, attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, asthma, inflammatory disease and other common and rare disorders affecting children.

A physician-scientist trained in paediatrics and pulmonology, Hakonarson has built one of the major paediatric genomic research programmes in the United States, with a strong emphasis on translating genomic findings into clinically useful diagnostics and precision therapies.