Shaun Purcell, Ph.D.

Shaun Purcell is a senior associate member of the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard and its Stanley Center for Psychiatric Research. His work focuses on the development of statistical and computational tools for the design of genetic studies, the detection of gene variants influencing complex human traits and the dissection of these effects in the larger context of other genetic and environmental factors. Currently, his research is particularly concerned with sleep neurophysiology in relation to genetic risk for psychiatric disease. Purcell is also affiliated with the Department of Psychiatry at Brigham & Women’s Hospital (BWH).

He holds degrees from the University of Oxford and University of London, and completed his Ph.D. at King’s College London. After earning his Ph.D., Purcell spent two years as a visiting postdoctoral fellow at the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research.