Nelson B. Freimer, MD

Dr. Nelson Freimer is Director of the Center for Neurobehavioral Genetics and Professor of Psychiatry at UCLA and Associate Director for Research Programs of the Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior. He also directs UCLA core facilities in genomics and neuroscience (The Informatics Center for Neurogenetics and Neurogenomics, The UCLA Neuroscience Genomics Core, and The Biological Samples Processing Core). He is Director of the NINDS-funded Postdoctoral Training Program in Neurobehavioral Genetics, and Co-Director of UCLA Neuroscience. Dr. Freimer received an M.D. degree from the Ohio State University, and completed residency training in psychiatry (at UC San Francisco) and a postdoctoral fellowship in human genetics (at Columbia University). He joined the UCLA faculty in 2000 after 10 years on the faculty at UC San Francisco.

The research in Dr. Freimer's laboratory aims to use large scale genomics methods to identify the genetic basis of complex traits, particularly neurobehavioral disorders including bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, depression, and Tourette Syndrome. He has also conducted large-scale genomics studies of metabolic phenotypes and cardiovascular disorders. His research group has pioneered in whole genome sequencing studies of such disorders as well as the application of large-scale genomics to our understanding of non-human primates.