Neil Risch is the Lamond Family Foundation Distinguished Professor in Human Genetics, the Director of the Institute for Human Genetics, and Professor and former chair of the Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics at the University of California, San Francisco. He is also Adjunct Investigator at the Kaiser Permanente Northern California Division of Research. Dr. Risch received his undergraduate training at the California Institute of Technology in mathematics and received his Ph.D. from the University of California, Los Angeles in Biomathematics with a minor in genetics. Prior to coming to UCSF in 2005, Dr. Risch held professorships at Columbia, Yale, and Stanford Universities. Dr. Risch's research interests are in the areas of human genetics, genetic epidemiology and statistical genetics, where he has published extensively. He is recognized as a highly cited researcher by the Institute for Scientific Information and is the recipient of the Curt Stern Award from the American Society of Human Genetics for his contributions to human genetics. He is an elected fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the California Academy of Sciences and the Institute of Medicine of the National Academies of Science. Risch is responsible for the identification of a number of genes underlying important medical conditions such as hemochromatosis and torsion dystonia. He has been regarded as the "statistical geneticist of our time" for his novel statistical approaches to the genetic study of common, complex diseases, in particular genome-wide association studies. Currently, he is co-Director of the Research Program on Genes, Environment and Health at the Kaiser Division of Research, and is the joint principal investigator of the largest genome-wide study to date of a cohort of 100,000 Kaiser members that is focusing on genetic and environmental factors influencing age-related disease and healthy aging.