Nish Chaturvedi, Director MRC Unit for Lifelong Health & Ageing at UCL, is a professor of clinical epidemiology. She was appointed to a chair in the National Heart & Lung Institute at Imperial College London in 2000, and then to the Institute of Cardiovascular Sciences at UCL in 2014. Her research career includes leadership of international observational studies and clinical trials in understanding and mitigating the complications of diabetes. She leads the Southall and Brent Revisited (SABRE) tri-ethnic cohort, designed to study ethnic differences in risks and consequences of cardiometabolic disease. She was appointed director of the MRC Unit for Lifelong Health & Ageing at UCL in 2017. In 2020, she was asked to lead the Lifelong Health & Wellbeing Covid-19 National Core Study, uniting research using national anonymised electronic health records and population cohorts.
Frank Dudbridge is Professor of Statistical Genetics and Head of the Department of Population Health Sciences at the University of Leicester, having previously held academic appointments at the MRC Biostatistics Unit and the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. His interests are in statistical methods for genetic epidemiology, in which he has contributed methods for haplotype analysis, genome-wide association studies, genetic risk prediction and Mendelian Randomization. His applied collaborations include cardiovascular, respiratory, cancer and psychiatric genetics.
Zoltán Kutalik will be addressing the molecular traits theme. He is a statistical geneticist, associate professor at the University of Lausanne, heading the Statistical Genetics Group and honorary senior lecturer at the University of Exeter. His main research interest lies in developing statistical methods integrating various data modalities to better understand the genetic architecture of complex human diseases.
Jean Morrison is an Assistant Professor in the University of Michigan Department of Biostatistics. Jean develops and applies statistical methods for genetic and genomic data with a focus on integrative methods for multiple phenotypes including Mendelian randomization, multi-trait factor analysis, and TWAS.
They are especially interested in high-dimensional phenotypes such as metabolomics, proteomics, and imaging phenotypes as well as opportunities provided by EHR-linked biobanks. Before joining the University of Michigan, Jean completed a postdoc at the University of Chicago Department of Human Genetics and their PhD at the University of Washington Department of Biostatistics.
Dr John Muriuki is a Research Fellow at the KEMRI-Wellcome Trust Research Programme in Kenya. John’s current research interest is in understanding the complex relationship between micronutrient deficiencies and life-threatening severe infections in young African children. John is applying genomic approaches to determine causality and mechanisms.
Michel Nivard is a professor of genetic epidemiology at the University of Bristol, his work considers the bio/psycho/social causes and consequences of psychopathology and relies heavily on triangulation.
Dr Karl Smith-Byrne is a Research Fellow at Green Templeton College and Senior Molecular Epidemiologist at the Cancer Epidemiology Unit, University of Oxford. In this role, he co-leads the metabolomics and proteomics research programme into the aetiology of prostate cancer, among others, using an integrative multi-omics approach.
Additionally, Karl conducts research into aetiology and risk prediction for various outcomes within the Million Women Study with a focus on uses of whole exome data. He also co-leads proteomics as part of a large European initiative, DISCERN, that focuses on understanding the causes of pancreatic, renal, and colorectal cancer.
He worked previously at the Genomic Epidemiology Branch of the International Agency for Research on Cancer in Lyon, France. While there Karl focused on implementing multi-omic methods to better understand factors contributing the aetiology, early detection, and prognosis of various cancers.
Professor Anne Tybjærg-Hansen MD DMSc; Chief Physician at the Department of Clinical Biochemistry at Rigshospitalet, Copenhagen University Hospital, Copenhagen, Denmark (1999). Clinical Professor of Clinical Biochemistry with Focus on Translational Molecular Cardiology at the Department of Clinical Medicine, University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark (2009).
Her research has focused on the genetics and genomics of cardiovascular disease and related diseases in large prospective studies of the general population (>150,000 participants). Recent focus areas include Mendelian Randomization, polygenic risk scores for dyslipidemia and CAD, and amyloidosis and amyloidosis-related heart disease and other diseases.
