Board of Directors

EXECUTIVE | DATA SCIENCE AND MEDICAL | BOARD OF DIRECTORS

dennis charney

Board Member

Dennis Charney, MD, has served on the Board of Directors at GeneDx (formerly Sema4) since June 2017.

Dr. Charney is also currently Anne and Joel Ehrenkranz Dean of the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai and President for Academic Affairs for the Mount Sinai Health System. He is a world expert in the neurobiology and treatment of mood and anxiety disorders, making fundamental contributions to the understanding of the causes of human anxiety, fear, depression, and resilience, and the discovery of new treatments for mood and anxiety disorders.

Dr. Charney was recruited to Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in 2004 as Dean of Research. In 2007, he became the Dean of the School and Executive Vice President for Academic Affairs of the Medical Center. In 2013, he was also named President for Academic Affairs for the Health System.

Under Dr. Charney’s leadership, the Icahn School of Medicine has risen to a rank of 13th among U.S. medical schools in National Institutes of Health (NIH) funding. As the sole medical school partnering with the seven hospitals of the Mount Sinai Health System, the School has one of the most expansive training and research footprints in the nation. Early in his tenure as Dean, Dr. Charney unveiled Mount Sinai’s $2.25 billion strategic plan that laid the foundation for the 17 robust Research Institutes that Mount Sinai is known for today. In 2017, Dr. Charney launched a five-year strategic plan for the School focusing on research and education. This new strategic plan provides a roadmap for continued interdisciplinary collaboration, innovation and discovery, with special emphasis on growth in precision medicine, immunotherapy, neurosciences, cancer, and cardiology.

In the Health System, Dr. Charney is currently developing the structure for complementary Clinical Institutes that will serve as Centers of Excellence for cancer, heart disease, diabetes, HIV, pulmonary diseases, and more, with the anticipation that this architecture — compatible research and clinical institutes — will further eliminate silos and generate game-changing models in clinical excellence and standards of care.

Dr. Charney’s career began in 1981 at Yale, where, within nine years, he rose from Assistant Professor to Professor of Psychiatry with tenure, a position he held for a decade. At Yale, he chaired the NIMH Board of Scientific Counselors, which advises the Institute’s director on intramural research programs. In 2000, NIMH recruited Dr. Charney to lead its Mood and Anxiety Disorder Research Program — one of the largest programs of its kind in the world —and the Experimental Therapeutics and Pathophysiology Branch.

Dr. Charney’s own research on depression has led to new hypotheses regarding the mechanisms of antidepressant drugs and discovery of new and novel therapies for treatment resistant depression including Lithium and Ketamine. The work demonstrating that Ketamine is a rapidly acting antidepressant has been hailed as one of the most exciting developments in antidepressant therapy in more than half a century. More recently, his pioneering research has expanded to include the psychobiological mechanisms of human resilience to stress.

Elected to the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences in 2000, Dr. Charney has been honored with every major award in his field for his scientific research. He is also a prolific author who has written or co-authored more than 700 publications, including groundbreaking scientific papers, chapters, and books. His studies on human resilience, which identified ten key resilience factors for building the strength to weather and bounce back from stress and trauma, are summarized in an inspiring book, “Resilience: The Science of Mastering Life’s Greatest Challenges” co-authored by Steven Southwick.

rachel sherman

Board Member

Rachel Sherman, MD, MPH, FACP®, has served on has served on the Board of Directors at GeneDx (formerly Sema4) since March 2020.

Currently, Rachel is also President of Rachel Sherman Partners LLC. She is assisting national and international clients in medical product development and regulation. Rachel is applying her expert knowledge of regulatory science and extensive experience in medical product evaluation and approval to address regulatory challenges at all stages of product development.

Rachel is an accomplished executive and is well known for her innovative, patient-centered approaches to solving complex policy questions. She served until January 2019 as Principal Deputy Commissioner at the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), where she spent the last 30 years in medical product development and regulation, honing her proficiency at managing the complex dynamics of small- and large-scale organizations in both public and private sectors.

Rachel’s medical and regulatory experience spans a broad range of subject matters, including biosimilars, expedited drug development, infectious diseases, good clinical practice, prescription drug promotion, and active postmarket surveillance. She fostered multiple FDA efforts to modernize and expedite traditional drug development programs, enabling the FDA to respond to public health needs in a nimble, patient-centric, and scientifically rigorous manner. The FDA’s entire process for licensing biosimilar biological products, an extensive effort following statutory changes in 2010, was designed, developed, and implemented under her leadership.

In addition to GeneDx, Rachel currently serves as a member of the Board of Directors for Aptinyx and is a part-time lecturer at the Department of Population Health, Harvard Pilgrim Health Care Institute.

Among Rachel’s many FDA awards are the FDA Distinguished Career Service Award, the Commissioner’s Special Citation (2006 and 2008), the FDA Award of Merit, and multiple Center for Drug Evaluation and Research (CDER) Center Director’s Special Citations. Rachel earned her MD at Mount Sinai School of Medicine and her MPH at Johns Hopkins University. She is the author or co-author of approximately 30 articles in peer-reviewed journals.

Leadership Team