Professor Sir Peter Donnelly FRS FMedSci

Peter Donnelly is Director of the Wellcome Trust Centre for Human Genetics and Professor of Statistical Science at the University of Oxford. He is distinguished for his seminal contributions to statistical methodology and its application to population genetics and the understanding of human disease susceptibility. His early work has had far reaching implications in a number of medical fields including microbial infection, human genetics, and forensic practice. More recently he has focused on human molecular genetics and has been one of the world’s leaders in human genome research. He played a pivotal role in the HapMap project and is centrally involved in the next generation of genetic studies of human disease, both in the UK and internationally. The work has culminated in Donnelly’s leadership of the Wellcome Trust Case Control Consortium, the world-leading UK collaboration already responsible for the largest disease genetics study undertaken, leading to the discovery of more than 25 novel genes associated with common human disease, as well as the first confirmed genes for height and obesity.