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Our Leadership Team

The Mass General Brigham Personalized Medicine leadership team comprises a distinguished group of clinicians, scientists, advisors, faculty, and information technologists affiliated with Harvard Medical School, Brigham and Women’s Hospital, and Massachusetts General Hospital.

About our team

Our research specialties include genetics and genomics, pathology, and epidemiology combined with a range of clinical medical specialties from pulmonology and neurology to rheumatology and psychiatry. The leadership team works together to drive innovation in all areas of personalized medicine and to ensure that the needs of our clients are met with an emphasis on continuous improvement.

Meet our vice president

Elizabeth Karlson, MD

Elizabeth Karlson, MD, MS

Vice President, Personalized Medicine
Associate Physician, Brigham and Women's Hospital
Professor of Medicine, Harvard Medical School

Dr. Elizabeth Karlson is a Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School, Vice President of Mass General Brigham Personalized Medicine, and a rheumatologist and epidemiologist at Brigham and Women’s Hospital. Dr. Karlson obtained her M.D. degree from the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. She completed her medical residency at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, followed by a clinical and research rheumatology fellowship, also at the Brigham. She joined the Brigham Division of Rheumatology, Inflammation and Immunity in 1994.

Dr. Karlson has played leadership roles in numerous multi-institutional research projects. As PI of the Mass General Brigham Biobank, Dr. Karlson has helped lead all aspects of this enterprise-wide effort. She leads the eMERGE (electronic Medical Records and Genomics Consortium) Clinical Center at Mass General Brigham studying the implementation of polygenic risk scores for common diseases in clinical care. She co-leads recruitment of a diverse cohort of >38,000 New England participants as co-Principal Investigator of the All of Us Research Program. She is co-Principal Investigator of the Post-Acute Sequela of SARS-CoV2 Data Resource Core (PASC-DRC). She serves as Director of the Rheumatic Disease Epidemiology Research Program for the Section of Clinical Sciences, Division of Rheumatology, Inflammation, and Immunity, Department of Medicine, Brigham and Women’s Hospital.  

Dr. Karlson has conducted patient-oriented and translational research for 32 years with expertise in longitudinal cohort studies, disease epidemiology and genetics, biobanking, and the use of bioinformatics to define phenotypes in the electronic health record (EHR). She is the author or co-author of 300+ publications. She has led large scale recruitment and use of data and samples for the Mass General Brigham Biobank that collects samples, family history, lifestyle and environmental survey data linked with comprehensive health information from electronic health records from 147,000+ Mass General Brigham patients. She has served on grant review committees for the National Institutes of Health, Arthritis Foundation, and national grant agencies in Canada and Europe. She has served on the American College of Rheumatology Blue Ribbon Panel on Academic Rheumatology. As a dedicated mentor, Dr. Karlson has supervised and mentored 26 trainees, of whom 20 hold appointments at academic institutions, 7 have received NIH K awards, 14 have received career development awards, and 7 have received NIH R01 grants. She has received the Henry Kunkel Young Investigator Award, the Excellence in Investigative Mentoring Award from the American College of Rheumatology, and the Senior Faculty Mentoring Award from Brigham and Women’s Hospital. 

Meet our leadership team

Director, Biobank Genomics Core at Personalized Medicine
Associate Laboratory Director, Laboratory for Molecular Medicine at Personalized Medicine
Assistant Professor, Pathology, Brigham and Women's Hospital and Massachusetts General Hospital


Dr. Amr is the director of the Biobank Genomics Core of Personalized Medicine, where he leads a team that works with basic and translational researchers across Mass General Brigham to identify DNA, RNA, and methylation markers and signatures of disease that can help de-convolute underlying mechanisms of pathogenesis, as well as be leveraged in diagnostic and clinical assays.

Executive Director of Information Technology and AI Solutions


Samuel "Sandy" Aronson is the Executive Director of IT and AI Solutions for Mass General Brigham Personalized Medicine and the Senior Director of IT for our Accelerator for Clinical Transformation. His teams develop and deploy technology to improve clinical processes in clinical genetics, remote health and decentralized clinical trials. In clinical genetics, the team has built infrastructure that supports the evolution and practice of genetic based personalized medicine in both patient facing and laboratory settings. This system ecosystem enables a continuous learning process that harnesses clinical testing flows to advance knowledge surrounding genetic variation. The infrastructure includes the GeneInsight Suite of applications that were registered as a medical device and distributed. The team is now working to deepen support for whole genome sequence management and interpretation. This includes developing and validating Generative AI functionality to support variant assessment.

The team has also deployed a platform that enables remote patient management by task shifted workforces using omnichannel communication. These capabilities have been used to equitably manage large patient populations. The platform is also currently supporting multiple decentralized clinical trials. We are now enhancing these capabilities using Generative AI focused on improving trial quality and cost effectiveness.

Prior to this position, Mr. Aronson was an IT consultant to the biotechnology industry working for Tribiosys. Mr. Aronson also held several positions with Sapient Corporation, was a Strategic Consultant for Monitor Company and founded both LearningAction, a web-based training company now part of Best Software and Stanford Data Solutions, a software consulting firm. Mr. Aronson holds a Masters in Organizational Behavior and a Bachelors in Computer Science from Stanford University. He also holds a Masters focused in Biology from Harvard Extension School.

Program Director, Biobank, Personalized Medicine
Director, Information Technology, Personalized Medicine


Natalie Boutin is program director at the Biobank and director of IT at Personalized Medicine. In this dual capacity, she is responsible for the Biobank’s operations and for its information technology infrastructure. She also oversees systems that drive clinical and research genomics at Personalized Medicine.

Director, Bioinformatics, Personalized Medicine
Director, Laboratory for Molecular Medicine, Personalized Medicine
Associate Professor, Pathology, Brigham and Women's and Harvard Medical School


Dr. Lebo joined Personalized Medicine as an assistant laboratory director for the Laboratory for Molecular Medicine in 2011 after completing his ABMG molecular genetics fellowship training at the Harvard Medical School Genetics Training Program. In the fall of 2013, Dr. Lebo became the head of Bioinformatics at Personalized Medicine and associate laboratory director for the Laboratory for Molecular Medicine. In 2018, he become the director of the Laboratory for Molecular Medicine.

Director, Clinical Laboratory Operations, Personalized Medicine


Lisa Mahanta is the director of Clinical Laboratory Operations for Personalized Medicine. She oversees laboratory operations for Personalized Medicine, including the Laboratory for Molecular Medicine. She received her bachelor’s degree from the University of New Hampshire in 2000 in biology with a minor in genetics. With the center since 2005, Lisa focuses on streamlining operations and implementing solutions that reduce labor, cost, and turnaround time while improving and maintaining quality. This paradigm continues as the landscape of molecular testing continues to be both complex and dynamic.

Associate Laboratory Director, Laboratory for Molecular Medicine, Personalized Medicine
Associate Professor, Pathology, Brigham and Women's Hospital


Dr. Mason-Suares joined Personalized Medicine in 2014 as an associate laboratory director at the Laboratory for Molecular Medicine and associate laboratory director at Brigham and Women’s Hospital (BWH) Cytogenetics Laboratory. She is the program director for the BWH Laboratory Genetics and Genomics (LGG) ABMG Fellowship, part of the Harvard Medical School Genetics Training Program. Her research interests include RASopathies and prenatal diagnosis.

Director of Preventive Cardiology, Massachusetts General Hospital
Paul and Phyllis Fireman Endowed Chair in Vascular Medicine, Massachusetts General Hospital
Associate Director of Personalized Medicine, Mass General Brigham
Associate Professor of Medicine, Harvard Medical School
Associate Member, Broad Institute of Harvard and MIT


Dr. Pradeep Natarajan is the Associate Director of Personalized Medicine at Mass General Brigham, Director of Preventive Cardiology at Massachusetts General Hospital, and Associate Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School. As a principal investigator within the Cardiovascular Research Center at Massachusetts General Hospital, the Program in Medical and Population Genetics at the Broad Institute, and Harvard Medical School, he leads an interdisciplinary research group using emerging methods in biomedical informatics and human investigation to leverage naturally occurring human genetic variation to advance the prevention of cardiovascular diseases, particularly atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease. He is a recognized investigative and clinical leader in the combined germline and somatic genetic basis of atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease leading several research consortia and advancing novel clinical precision cardiovascular medicine paradigms.

Sr. Administrative and Financial Director, Personalized Medicine


Meini Shin is the senior administrative and financial director for Personalized Medicine. She oversees the overall operation of the center, human resources, financial planning, budgeting, grant management, and all financial services including accounting, payroll, and procurement. She supports the scientific director on strategic initiatives. Meini’s background includes over 20 years of experience in financial management, planning, and budgeting. 

Co-Investigator, Mass General Brigham Biobank, Personalized Medicine
Scientific Director, Mass General Research Institute
Professor, Neurology, Massachusetts General Hospital


Dr. Slaugenhaupt , is the Scientific Director of the Mass General Research Institute, a strategic initiative that will support the entire research enterprise at Mass General to foster and sustain medical innovation. She is also a Professor in the Department of Neurology at Mass General and Harvard Medical School, and an Investigator in the Center for Genomic Medicine. She also co-directs the Mass General Brigham Biobank at Mass General, an exciting initiative that will speed the translation of research discoveries into improved clinical care for patients.

Dr. Slaugenhaupt spearheads several programs and educational initiatives at Mass General, including a thriving undergraduate summer internship program. Her Research Institute team works to promote science at Mass General by increasing interactions with industry, by fundraising for Research Institute initiatives, including partnering with individual philanthropists, their families and foundations and by promoting Mass General research to the community through events and social media.

Dr. Slaugenhaupt's research focuses on two neurological disorders, familial dysautonomia (FD) and mucolipidosis type IV (MLIV), as well as the common cardiac disorder mitral valve prolapse (MVP). Discoveries in Dr. Slaugenhaupt’s laboratory have led to the successful implementation of critical population screening for FD and MLIV, and to the development of a treatment for FD that directly targets the mRNA splicing mechanism. This exciting work has led to a clinical trial of the first therapeutic for FD aimed at altering the molecular defect.

In 2013, Dr. Slaugenhaupt was named the Elizabeth G. Riley and Dan E. Smith, Jr. MGH Research Scholar. In 2016, she was honored with a prestigious Javits Neuroscience Investigator Award by the National Institute for Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS) at NIH, and she was recently named one of the 2016 Top Ten Women to Watch in Science and Technology by the Boston Business Journal. In 2020, she was named the Elizabeth G. Riley and Daniel E. Smith, Jr. Endowed MGH Research Institute Chair.

Professor of Psychiatry, Harvard Medical School
Professor in the Department of Epidemiology, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health
Jerrold F. Rosenbaum Endowed Chair in Psychiatry, Massachusetts General Hospital


Dr. Smoller is a psychiatrist, epidemiologist, and geneticist whose research focus has been understanding the genetic and environmental determinants of psychiatric disorders across the lifespan and using big data to advance precision mental health including improved methods to reduce risk and enhance resilience.

Dr. Smoller is the Jerrold F. Rosenbaum Endowed Chair in Psychiatry, Professor of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School and Professor in the Department of Epidemiology at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health in Boston. He is Associate Chief for Research in the MGH Department of Psychiatry, Director of the Center for Precision Psychiatry, Director of the Psychiatric and Neurodevelopmental Genetics Unit in the MGH Center for Genomic Medicine, and co-Director of the Center for Suicide Research and Prevention at MGB and Harvard. Dr. Smoller is a Tepper Family MGH Research Scholar and also serves as Director of the Omics Unit of the MGH Division of Clinical Research and co-Director of the Mass General Brigham Biobank at MGH. He is also co-Director of the Mass General Brigham (T32) Training Program in Precision and Genomic Medicine, an Associate Member of the Broad Institute, and President of the International Society of Psychiatric Genetics.

He has played a leading role in national and international efforts to advance precision medicine, including as a Principal Investigator (PI) in the eMERGE (Electronic Medical Records and Genomics) network, the PsycheMERGE Consortium and the New England Precision Medicine Consortium as part of the NIH All of Us Research Program.

Assistant Laboratory Director, Laboratory for Molecular Medicine, Personalized Medicine
Instructor, Pathology, Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School


Dr. Zouk joined Personalized Medicine in 2016 as an assistant director at the Laboratory for Molecular Medicine after completing her ABMGG fellowship in clinical molecular genetics at the Harvard Medical School Genetics Training Program.

Dr. Zouk’s work has focused on genetic testing that combines high-throughput technologies along with advanced clinical interpretation to provide comprehensive genetic information that can be used for effective implementation in personalized medicine. She is actively involved in the end-to-end final interpretation and sign-out of clinical genetic tests, both in a diagnostic setting, and in a genomic screening environment, as a co-investigator or collaborator on various projects, where she oversees the day-to-day management of the interpretation of the genomic data and return of clinical reports to participants.