Dr. Pastinen has been the Director of the Genomic Medicine Center (GMC) at Children’s Mercy Kansas City since 2017. Dr. Pastinen joined Children's Mercy from McGill University, where he held a Canada Research Chair from 2007 to 2017 and professorship in Human Genetics. He obtained his MD PhD from University of Helsinki, Finland and pursued post-doctoral studies at McGill University. He has authored over 170 peer-reviewed publications, including papers in top-tier journals Cell and Nature Genetics.
Prior to joining Children’s Mercy, he led the epigenome mapping center at McGill as part of the International Human Epigenome Consortium. Since 2019 Dr. Pastinen is leading Genomic Answers for Kids, a foundational initiative for future genomic research at Children’s Mercy Research Institute that aims to develop better tools to learn from 30,000 children with rare genetic conditions and disseminate this data resource to accelerate rare disease research globally.