Stephen J. Haggarty, PhD, serves as a faculty member in the Department of Neurology at Harvard Medical School and the Center for Genomic Medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital, where he is the director of the Chemical Neurobiology Laboratory, as well as the scientific director of neurobiology for the Center for the Neuroscience of Psychedelics in the Department of Psychiatry.

Haggarty’s research program operates at the interface of neurology and chemical biology, focusing on the discovery of novel chemical probes to dissect the role of neuroplasticity in health and disease and the use of reprogramming technology to create patient-specific, induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) as ex vivo models of neurogenetic disorders. These interdisciplinary research efforts are guided by knowledge emerging from human genetics regarding the root causes of disease and leverage advances in the field of chemical neuroscience. These endeavors have led to the discovery of novel chemical probes targeting neurotrophic factor signaling, epigenetic regulation of neuronal gene expression, neurogenesis, synaptogenesis, and proteostasis networks, including the first heterobifunctional, small molecules capable of selectively targeting pathological tau for degradation by the proteasome. Collectively, these collaborative efforts seek to address the challenging goal of discovering novel targets and next-generation, disease-modifying therapies using the principles of precision medicine.