LeenaPeltonen.EU

Professor Leena Peltonen-Palotie

Leena Peltonen, MD., Ph.D.  is the Head of Human Genetics at the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute, UK, Research Director at the Institute for Molecular Medicine FIMM, University of Helsinki and National Institute for Health and Welfare, Finland and also a visiting Professor at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, USA. With over 500 publications, Dr. Peltonen is among leading molecular geneticists world-wide.  She is one of the pioneers in the use of genetically isolated populations in the genetics-based identification of disease genes.   She was the founding Chair of the Department of Human Genetics at UCLA in 1998-2002 and president of HUGO in 2005-2007.  Dr. Peltonen has also served as a member of the UNESCO Bioethics Committee, and since 2006 she has been a Foreign Associate Member of the National Academies USA, Institute of Medicine (IOM).  She was honoured by the Honorary Doctorship of the University of Uppsala in January 2000 in the Millennium Promotion celebrating the 400^th anniversary of the Promotion tradition in Scandinavia. In 2003 she obtained the Margaret Pittman lectureship award, given to eminent female scientists by NIH and in 2006 she received two international Prizes, the Nordic Fernstrom Prize and the European van Gysel Prize.