SysGen Seminar – Jac Charlesworth – 19th May, 2017

Jac Charlesworth

Menzies Institute for Medical Research, University of Tasmania

Friday 19th May
12-1pm
FW Jones Theatre, 3rd Floor, Medical Building, The University of Melbourne

Focus on the family: Using families to find genetic variants influencing complex disease

Bio
Dr Charlesworth runs a computational genomics research group at the Menzies Institute for Medical Research at UTAS. She has a particular interest in complex disease gene discovery using next-gen sequencing in large families, and of using ‘normal’ population variation to inform disease research. She is a statistical geneticist with a background in molecular biology, allowing her to occupy the interface between data analysis and biological interpretation.

Dr Charlesworth is currently hunting for genetic variation underpinning neurological disorders including multiple sclerosis, eye diseases including glaucoma, and other complex traits including cancers, diabetes and brain structural variation.  She also manages the computational infrastructure for genomics research at Menzies, and provides bioinformatics training and support.

Dr Charlesworth obtained her PhD in statistical genetics from the University of Tasmania in 2006. She then spent four years as a postdoctoral fellow at the Texas Biomedical Research Institute (formerly Southwest Foundation for Biomedical Research) in the USA. In 2010 she returned to Australia where she is now a Senior Research Fellow in computational genomics at the Menzies Institute for Medical Research; providing analytical support to a wide range of studies at the institute while maintaining her own research into complex disease.

Enquiries: Andrew Siebel (asiebel@unimelb.edu.au)