David Housman has been engaged in work on genetic diseases since 1970. He received his PhD at Brandeis University in 1971. After two years of Postdoctoral work at MIT, he joined the faculty of the University of Toronto and the staff of the Ontario Cancer Institute in 1973. In 1975, he returned to MIT as a Faculty Member where he has remained to the present. He and his laboratory have played a significant role in discoveries on hemoglobinopathies and thalassemias, childhood kidney cancer, melanoma, leukemia, Huntington’s disease, myotonic dystrophy, and drug resistance in cancer therapy. He is active in teaching at MIT, teaching graduate courses in genetics, undergraduate courses in human disease and in the joint MIT-Harvard Medical School program he has taught medical genetics to first year medical students for over twenty years. He is a Board member of the Hereditary Disease Foundation and the FSHD Muscular Dystrophy Society. He is member of the National Academy of Sciences and the Institute of Medicine. Throughout his career, he has had a passionate commitment to understanding the connection between genes and human health and to bringing genetic information to people in ways that support and improve their lives.
