Neil Hanchard is a Jamaican physician and scientist who is clinical investigator in the National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI), where he leads the Childhood Complex Disease Genomics section.[1] Prior to joining NHGRI, he was an associate professor of molecular and human genetics at the Baylor College of Medicine.[2] He is a fellow of the American College of Medical Genetics and Genomics, .[1][3][4] Hanchard's research focuses on the genetics of childhood disease, with an emphasis on diseases impacting global health.[2]
Hanchard grew up in Jamaica.[3] In 1999, he received a Bachelor of Medicine, Bachelor of Surgery degree from the University of the West Indies in Kingston, Jamaica. He then studied at the University of Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar.[1][5] He received a Doctor of Philosophy degree from Oxford in 2004, and completed a residency in pediatrics at the Mayo Clinic in 2009. Subsequently, he completed a clinical fellowship in clinical genetics at the Baylor College of Medicine.[2]
Hanchard's research focuses on genetic factors that can lead children to manifest especially severe symptoms of malnutrition,[6] genomics of disease progression in children with HIV and tuberculosis, and genetic factors that contribute to comorbidities in sickle cell disease.[2] He is a member of the Undiagnosed Diseases Network, and is interested in identifying molecular diagnoses for children with uncommon genetic disease symptoms.[2]
In collaboration with the Human Heredity and Health in Africa (H3Africa) consortium, he was a senior author on a publication surveying human genetic diversity in Africa.[7][8][9] The study was published in and featured on the cover of Nature, which described the work as "a milestone in genomics research."[10][11] In this work, they sequenced the complete genomes of 426 African individuals who belonged to 50 distinct ethnolinguistic groups, including individuals from populations that had never previously been sequenced.[8][12] The study revealed previously unknown historical human migration patterns, for example leading to insight into the history of the Berom people of Nigeria.[9] It identified more than 3 million genetic variants that had not been previously observed, which could contribute to making genetic tests more accurate for people with African ancestry.[9][8]
He has coauthored more than 70 peer reviewed articles. His papers have appeared in Nature, Science, and the American Journal of Human Genetics.[1]
Hanchard is married with children.[3]