Ilana Zinn, DMD

Dr. Gerald Raymond is a clinical geneticist and neurologist at Johns Hopkins where he is also a professor of genetic medicine and neurology. He obtained his MD at the University of Connecticut and was trained in Pediatrics at Johns Hopkins Hospital and Neurology at the Mass. General Hospital. He received additional training in developmental neuropathology at the Universite Catholique de Louvain in Belgium and clinical genetics at the Harvard Program. Dr. Raymond’s research has been at the overlap of genetics and neurology with specific focus on peroxisomal disorders including adrenoleukodystrophy. He has been actively involved in newborn screening for ALD and in developing clinical follow-up programs. He has extensive experience in clinical management of neurogenetic issues including peroxisomal and lysosomal disorders. He presently serves as the Director of the Lysosomal Storage Disease program in the department of Genetic Medicine.

Sonja Rasmussen, MD, MS is Professor in the Department of Genetic Medicine at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. She joined Johns Hopkins after 4 years at the University of Florida (UF) College of Medicine and College of Public Health and Health Professions where she served as a Professor in the Departments of Pediatrics, Epidemiology, and Obstetrics and Gynecology and as the Director of UF’s Precision Health Program. Before joining University of Florida in 2018, she served for 20 years at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in Atlanta, where she held several scientific leadership roles. She served in leadership roles during several CDC responses to public health emergencies, including 2009 H1N1 influenza, H7N9 influenza, Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS), and Zika virus. Dr. Rasmussen is an author on >300 peer-reviewed publications and is the lead editor of The CDC Field Epidemiology Manual, released by Oxford University Press in 2019. Her research interests focus on understanding the effects of infections and medications during pregnancy, genetic and environmental risk factors for birth defects, and morbidity and mortality associated with genetic conditions.

Dr. Jill A. Fahrner is an assistant professor in the Departments of Genetic Medicine and Pediatrics at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. Her area of clinical expertise is medical genetics. Dr. Fahrner earned her Ph.D. from Johns Hopkins University and her M.D. from the University of North Carolina. She completed pediatrics residency training at Duke University Medical Center. She joined the McKusick-Nathans Institute of Genetic Medicine as a genetic medicine resident in 2009 and completed her training in 2012. She stayed on as chief resident from 2012-2013 and then joined the faculty as an assistant professor in the Department of Pediatrics within the McKusick-Nathans Institute of Genetic Medicine in 2013. Her current primary appointment is Assistant Professor in the Department of Genetic Medicine, where she is Director of the multidisciplinary Epigenetics and Chromatin Clinic.She is a physician-scientist with a long-standing interest in epigenetic mechanisms of disease. Her clinical focus is on caring for individuals with epigenetic and chromatin disorders, specifically Mendelian disorders of the epigenetic machinery, or chromatin modifying disorders. She has seen hundreds of individuals with congenital disorders involving disrupted epigenetics, most of which exhibit neurodevelopmental disabilities and abnormal growth. Her laboratory research is focused on understanding disease mechanisms and developing therapies for select Mendelian disorders of the epigenetic machinery.She is a member of the American Society of Human Genetics (ASHG), having won an ASHG Reviewer’s Choice Abstract Award for her work on growth retardation in Kabuki syndrome 1. She has received a Johns Hopkins School of Medicine Clinician Scientist Award, a Johns Hopkins School of Medicine Musculoskeletal Pilot and Feasibility Award, a William and Ella Owens Medical Research Foundation Award, the Margaret Ellen Nielsen Fellowship Award, and the Alice and YT Chen Travel Award while at Johns Hopkins. She is the recipient of a prestigious Hartwell Foundation Individual Biomedical Research Award and also has ongoing research funding from the National Institutes of Health.