Biography
Michèle Ramsay (PhD) is the Director of the Sydney Brenner Institute for Molecular Bioscience (SBIMB) and Professor in the Division of Human Genetics, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg (Wits). Her research interests include studying African population genetic diversity and environmental factors to better understand their role in diseases. Her areas of research span rare monogenic eye and skin disorders (including albinism and keratolytic winter erythema), African population genetics, pharmacogenomics and complex disease traits in African populations. She is the co-lead for the Southern African Human Genome Programme (SAHGP) with a view to exploring precision medicine in an African context. The SAHGP pilot study on 24 whole genome sequences was published in Nature Communications in December 2017. As an active steering committee member of the Human Heredity and Health in Africa (H3Africa) Consortium, she promotes ethical genomic research in Africa. She is Principal Investigator of an NIH funded Collaborative Centre under the H3Africa Consortium for “Genomic and environmental risk factors for cardiometabolic diseases in Africans”. This is a Wits INDEPTH partnership referred to as AWI-Gen. Building research capacity in genomics in Africa is important to her and she teaches at undergraduate level, supervises postgraduate students, host postdoctoral fellows and enjoys mentoring young African scientists. Ramsay holds a South African Research Chair on Genomics and Bioinformatics of African Populations and is President of the African Society for Human Genetics.