Jacob Michaelson, Ph.D.

Jacob Michaelson is a Roy J. Carver Associate Professor of Psychiatry and Neuroscience and division director for Computational and Molecular Psychiatry at the University of Iowa. He and his team combine large-scale molecular data sets with machine learning to make predictions about how the brain is influenced by the genome. These approaches are applied mostly to neurodevelopmental conditions, including autism and language impairment. Michaelson also leads a collaboration at the University of Iowa focused on learning more about the biological basis of twice-exceptionality (i.e., when a person has very high cognitive ability as well as a psychiatric or neurodevelopmental diagnosis such autism). Michaelson is the Iowa site Principle Investigator for SPARK (Simons Foundation Powering Autism Research for Knowledge) and is the leader of the Network and Pathway Analysis working group of the SPARK Genomics Consortium.