Dr. Goldstein was trained in theoretical population genetics, and has studied many aspects of human genetic variation with a particular focus on the genetics of disease and treatment response. Dr. Goldstein received his Ph.D. from Stanford University, was a lecturer at Oxford University, and served as the Wolfson Professor of Genetics at the Institute of Neurology, University College London. In 2005 Dr. Goldstein moved to Duke University as a professor in the Departments of Molecular Genetics and Microbiology, and Biology, and as director of the Center for Human Genome Variation (CHGV). Dr. Goldstein, the Richard and Pat Johnson Distinguished University Professor at Duke University, moved to Columbia University as director of Columbia’s Institute for Genomic Medicine in January 2015. Under Dr. Goldstein’s leadership, the CHGV at Duke emerged as a leading human genetics research center with a number of seminal contributions, including the discovery of de novo mutations in ATP1A3, the gene responsible for alternating hemiplegia of childhood (AHC), and the role of IL28B in treatment response to hepatitis C infection. He has also been a leader in the application of next generation DNA sequencing to the diagnosis of rare genetic and neurological conditions. Dr. Goldstein is a principal investigator of Epi4K, the NINDS Epilepsy Genetics Center without Walls, and he directs its genome sequencing and bioinformatic core. Epi4K, currently the largest epilepsy genetics project in the world, is in the process of generating whole exome and whole genome sequence data on more than 4,000 patients with epilepsy. Dr. Goldstein received the Royal Society/Wolfson research merit awards in the UK for his contributions to human population genetics. He currently serves on the NIH-NINDS Advisory Council and was elected a fellow of AAAS in 2013.
