Prof Michele Ramsay

Director | Professor in Human Genetics, University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa

Michèle Ramsay (PhD) is director of the Sydney Brenner Institute for Molecular Bioscience (SBIMB), Professor in Human Genetics and South African Research Chair in Genomics and Bioinformatics of African Populations at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg. Her research aims to shed light on the role of African population genomic variation in susceptibility to diseases, in the context of the ethnic and environmental diversity across the continent. She is PI of an African longitudinal cohort of ~12,000 individuals from Ghana, Burkina Faso, Kenya and South Africa, referred to as AWI-Gen, as part of the H3Africa Consortium. The main aim of AWI-Gen is to examine genetic and non-genetic factors in the context of cardiometabolic diseases and traits in African populations. She is on the External Advisory Board of the EU-Africa PerMed Consortium, co-chair of the International Health Cohorts Consortium (IHCC) and member of the WHO Technical Advisory Group on Genomics (TAG-G). Michèle is immediate past President of the International Federation of Human Genetics Societies and the African Society of Human Genetics.