Michael S. Watson, PhD, FACMG, received his MS in Medical Genetics and his PhD in Physiology & Biophysics from the University of Alabama at Birmingham while focusing on human medical genetics; his postdoctoral training was in the Medical Genetics Training Program at Yale University School of Medicine where he was the Associate Director of Clinical Cytogenetics. He was director of Clinical and Molecular Cytogenetics at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, Professor of Pediatrics and Genetics from 1986–2001, Director of the Medical Genetics Training Program (1996-1999) and is certified by the American Board of Medical Genetics (ABMG) in Clinical Cytogenetics and as a PhD Medical Geneticist. He served on the Board of Directors of the American College of Medical Genetics (1992-1998) and was Vice President for Laboratory Affairs, and chaired numerous ACMG Committees. He was co-chair of the NIH/DOE Task Force on Genetic Testing from 1995 through 1997. He directed the HRSA funded project “Newborn Screening: Toward a Uniform Screening Panel and System”. He is project director of HRSA’s National Coordinating Center for Regional Genetics and Newborn Screening Collaborative Groups and for NIH/NICHD’s Newborn Screening Translational Research Network (NBSTRN) Coordinating Center. He is also a co-P.I. for the ClinGen Resource Project, an NIH/NHGRI funded project to clinically annotate genome variation. As of 2001, he became an Adjunct Professor of Pediatrics at Washington University School of Medicine and Executive Director of the American College of Medical Genetics and Genomics the ACMG Foundation for Genetic and Genomic Medicine.
