Center for Precision Health Research Seminar Series

Theodore G. Drivas, M.D. Ph. D. 
Clinical Geneticist / Assistant Professor of Medicine 
Translational Medicine and Human Genetics 
University of Pennsylvania 

Assistant Director of Scientific Outreach 
Penn Medicine BioBank

Teddy Drivas is a Clinical Geneticist and an Assistant Professor of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania in the Division of Translational Medicine and Human Genetics where he serves as the Assistant Director of Scientific Outreach for the PennMedicine BioBank. Through his clinical work, focusing on the care of adult patients with known or suspected genetic conditions, he has established himself as a dedicated advocate for the advancement of genetic testing in adult populations to improve patient outcomes and combat disparities and inequities in genetic medicine. Outside of the clinic, the Drivas Lab is engaged in pioneering research at the intersection of common and rare disease genetics, leveraging the latest in informatic, molecular, and translational research techniques to elucidate the complex genetic architecture that underlies human disease. The lab focuses on identifying and validating genetic pathways and interactions that act together to perturb fundamental cellular processes important to human health, with a particular focus on the complex cellular organelle known as the primary cilium, and its involvement in both rare syndromic and common complex disease pathogenesis.

Heidi Rehm, Ph.D.
Institute Member, Co-director of the Program in Medical and Population Genetics
BROAD Institute

Heidi Rehm, a human geneticist and genomic medicine researcher, is co-director of the Program in Medical and Population Genetics and an institute member at the Broad Institute. She is the chief genomics officer in the Department of Medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH), working to integrate genomics into medical practice with standardized approaches. She is also a professor of pathology at Harvard Medical School and faculty member of the Center for Genomic Medicine at MGH.

As a board-certified laboratory geneticist and medical director of the Clinical Research Sequencing Platform, she is guiding genomic testing for clinical and clinical research use. She is a leader in defining standards for the interpretation of sequence variants and a principal investigator of a major NIH-funded effort called ClinGen (Clinical Genome Resource), providing free and publicly accessible resources to support the interpretation of genes and variants.

Rehm also co-leads the Broad Center for Mendelian Genomics with Anne O’Donnell-Luria focused on discovering novel rare disease genes and co-leads the Matchmaker Exchange to aid in gene discovery. She is a strong advocate and pioneer of open science and data sharing, working to extend these approaches through her role as a vice chair of the Global Alliance for Genomics and Health. Rehm is also a principal investigator of the Broad-LMM-Color All of Us Genome Center, supporting the sequencing and return of results to a cohort of one million individuals in the U.S. and co-leading gnomAD, the Genome Aggregation Database.

Rehm is a board member of the American College of Medical Genetics and Genomics and the National Library of Medicine. She serves as an editor of the Cold Spring Harbor Molecular Case Studies journal and as an associate editor of the American Journal of Human Genetics.