Name: Vanessa Hayes - Tracing human origins to a wetland in Southern Africa
Start: 2024-10-11T06:00:00+10:00
Location: King St Wharf 1, Sydney, NSW, Australia, New South Wales 2000

Vanessa Hayes - Tracing human origins to a wetland in Southern Africa

While Prof Vanessa Hayes has been using genomic data to rewrite our human history, the focus of her presentation today, she has a particular interest in using the power of genomic interrogation to unravel prostate cancer health disparities, specifically related to African associated cancer-related mortality.
Professor Vanessa Hayes is the Petre Chair of Prostate Cancer Research in the School of Medical Sciences and Head of the Ancestry and Health Genomics Laboratory located within the Charles Perkins Centre at the University of Sydney in Australia.
South African born, Vanessa completed her PhD in Cancer Genetics at the University of Groningen, in The Netherlands in 1999, moving to Australia in 2003 where she opened the Centre for Molecular Genetics at the Garvan Institute of Medical Research.
Since this period, she has represented Australia as a Fulbright Professional Scholar to Pennsylvania State University, while spending time at the J. Craig Venter Institute in San Diego before returning to Australia.
Vanessa has spent much of her career dedicated to making genomic medicine a reality within Africa, and South Africa, from having generated the first African human genomes, including that of the late Archbishop Desmond Tutu in 2010, to more recently the first cancer genome data for Sub-Saharan Africa.
While she has been using genomic data to rewrite our human history, the focus of her presentation today, she has a particular interest in using the power of genomic interrogation to unravel prostate cancer health disparities, specifically related to African associated cancer-related mortality.
Representing her global footprint, Vanessa also holds an Extraordinary Professorship at the University of Pretoria in South Africa, as well an Honorary Professorship at the University of Manchester in the UK, while hosting students and fellows from around the globe.
Vanessa’s research is supported by Petre Foundation and the Australian government, as well as by the National Institute of Health, Department of Defense and the Prostate Cancer Foundation in the United States.