Share

In Memoriam: Richard Maas

M.D., Ph.D.

Professor of Medicine, Harvard Medical School

Division of Genetics, Brigham and Women’s Hospital

Dr. Maas was Professor of Medicine (Genetics) at Harvard Medical School, and former Chief of the Division of Genetics at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, a position he held for over 20 years.  His credentials included 30 years on the HMS faculty as a physician-scientist, tenure as an HHMI Investigator, election to the ASCI and as a Fellow of the AAAS, an NIH MERIT Award, and many other accomplishments.  Faculty of the BWH Division of Genetics include members of HHMI, NAS, and NAM, as well as past winners of the Gairdner, Lasker, and Breakthrough Prizes. Dr. Maas was also a PI of the BWH Biomedical Research Institute Director’s Transformative Award that provides institutional support to Brigham Genomic Medicine (BGM).  BGM is an integrated clinical and research program that enables BWH faculty from multiple BWH departments and divisions to diagnose genetic disorders and to discover new monogenic disease genes via WES/WGS.  He was also involved in and a prior PI of the External Scientific Advisory Group of an NIH U01 Consortium called FaceBase that employs WES/WGS to identify genes that cause craniofacial birth defects, Director of the Harvard Undiagnosed Disease Clinical Site (HUDN-CS) Genome Analysis Team.  In addition, he previously directed a large NIH U54 Interdisciplinary Research Consortium focused on systems biology approaches to organ regeneration.  His research focused on the developmental genetics of vertebrate organogenesis, on disease gene discovery, and on the clinical implementation of genomic medicine.

Dr. Maas earned his undergraduate degree in chemistry from Dartmouth College before matriculating in the Vanderbilt M.D., Ph.D. program. Dr. Maas then pursued his internship and residency in Internal Medicine at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and completed his postdoctoral training with Dr. Philip Leder in the Department of Genetics at Harvard Medical School. He joined the HMS faculty in the Division of Genetics at Brigham in 1989.

In Memoriam: Richard Maas

M.D., Ph.D.

Professor of Medicine, Harvard Medical School

Division of Genetics, Brigham and Women’s Hospital

Dr. Maas was Professor of Medicine (Genetics) at Harvard Medical School, and former Chief of the Division of Genetics at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, a position he held for over 20 years.  His credentials included 30 years on the HMS faculty as a physician-scientist, tenure as an HHMI Investigator, election to the ASCI and as a Fellow of the AAAS, an NIH MERIT Award, and many other accomplishments.  Faculty of the BWH Division of Genetics include members of HHMI, NAS, and NAM, as well as past winners of the Gairdner, Lasker, and Breakthrough Prizes. Dr. Maas was also a PI of the BWH Biomedical Research Institute Director’s Transformative Award that provides institutional support to Brigham Genomic Medicine (BGM).  BGM is an integrated clinical and research program that enables BWH faculty from multiple BWH departments and divisions to diagnose genetic disorders and to discover new monogenic disease genes via WES/WGS.  He was also involved in and a prior PI of the External Scientific Advisory Group of an NIH U01 Consortium called FaceBase that employs WES/WGS to identify genes that cause craniofacial birth defects, Director of the Harvard Undiagnosed Disease Clinical Site (HUDN-CS) Genome Analysis Team.  In addition, he previously directed a large NIH U54 Interdisciplinary Research Consortium focused on systems biology approaches to organ regeneration.  His research focused on the developmental genetics of vertebrate organogenesis, on disease gene discovery, and on the clinical implementation of genomic medicine.

Dr. Maas earned his undergraduate degree in chemistry from Dartmouth College before matriculating in the Vanderbilt M.D., Ph.D. program. Dr. Maas then pursued his internship and residency in Internal Medicine at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and completed his postdoctoral training with Dr. Philip Leder in the Department of Genetics at Harvard Medical School. He joined the HMS faculty in the Division of Genetics at Brigham in 1989.

Recent Publications

Phenotypic Variability and Paternal Inheritance of a CHD8 Variant Causing Intellectual Developmental Disorder With Autism and Macrocephaly Confirmed by Epigenetic and Structural Analyses

Published On 2025 Dec 17

Journal article

CONCLUSION: We describe the case of IDDAM caused by a paternally inherited CHD8 variant. Our findings highlight the importance of considering parental inheritance in IDDAM diagnoses and suggest epigenetic and structural biology analyses as valuable tools for reclassifying VUS when variant pathogenicity remains uncertain.


An optimized variant prioritization process for rare disease diagnostics: recommendations for Exomiser and Genomiser

Published On 2025 Oct 22

Journal article

CONCLUSION: This study provides an evidence-based framework for variant prioritization in ES and GS data using Exomiser and Genomiser. These recommendations have been implemented in the Mosaic platform to support the ongoing analysis of undiagnosed UDN participants and provide efficient, scalable reanalysis to improve diagnostic yield. Our work also highlights the importance of tracking solved cases and diagnostic variants that can be used to benchmark bioinformatics tools. Exomiser and...