Eric Morrow is a physician-scientist with extensive experience in autism and related neurodevelopmental disorders. He trained as a neurodevelopmental biologist, geneticist and psychiatrist with a focus in developmental disorders. Since moving to Brown University in 2009, Morrow has taken an active role in building a multidisciplinary, translational research program in autism research. Taking an integrated approach involving mouse models, stem cells derived from affected individuals and clinical investigation in affected individuals, his research focus is on normal mechanisms that regulate brain development and on genetic and cellular mechanisms that lead to severe forms of autism and related disorders. Morrow and his team largely follow a ‘genetics-first’ approach, wherein rare genetic disorders are studied with respect to children exhibiting abnormalities in both cognitive and social development and in postnatal brain growth (i.e., microcephaly or macrocephaly). Morrow’s long-term research aim is to establish a basic foundation for improved genetic diagnosis and treatment interventions designed to enhance cognitive and functional gains in persons with childhood neurodevelopmental disorders.

Morrow is the Mencoff Family Professor of Biology and professor of psychiatry and human behavior in the Carney Institute for Brain Science at Brown University. He received his M.D.-Ph.D. from the Harvard Medical School-Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Division of Health Sciences and Technology program, and he completed psychiatry and neurology training at Massachusetts General Hospital and McLean Hospital. He conducted a postdoctoral fellowship in human genetics at Boston Children’s Hospital and the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard.