Michèle Ramsay

Director of the Sydney Brenner Institute for Molecular Bioscience (SBIMB), Professor in the Division of Human Genetics and South African Research Chair (Genomics and Bioinformatics of African Populations) at the University of the Witwatersrand (Wits), Johannesburg, South Africa. Her research interests include African population genetic and epigenetic diversity and their role in diseases exacerbated by adverse lifestyle choices, including obesity and cardiometabolic diseases. She collaborates on genetic research into eye and skin disorders and autoimmune diseases in African populations and studies epigenetic changes in a mouse model for fetal alcohol spectrum disorders. Michele plays a leadership role in the Southern African Human Genome Programme (SAHGP), the Human Heredity and Health in Africa Consortium (H3Africa) as immediate past chair of the H3Africa Steering Committee and as President of the African Society for Human Genetics. She is the principal investigator of an H3Africa NIH funded Collaborative Centre, AWI-Gen, which is a Wits-INDEPTH partnership to investigate genomic and environmental risk factors for cardiometabolic diseases in Africans, and of an NRF funded program on Personalised Medicine in African populations.