Academic Faculty

Our research is built upon our Faculty of approximately 35 research leaders. Each develops his or her own hypothesis-driven research, seeking answers to important biomedical questions. The Faculty member leads a team of postdoctoral fellows, PhD students and support staff.

The research projects of each Faculty member must strengthen our overarching areas of Human Genetics, Mouse and Zebrafish Genetics, Pathogen Genetics and Bioinformatics.

Faculty members often lead national or international collaborative programmes. In addition, most are responsible for one or more of our main resources, such as sequencing programmes or database development.

David Adams, faculty member.

David Adams - Experimental cancer genetics

David performs forward genetic screens to uncover cancer genes and pathways and leads a programme to decode the genomes of several mouse strains.
David's email, profile and project.

Carl Anderson, faculty member.

Carl Anderson - Statistical genetics

Carl applies statistical methodology to the analysis of large-scale genetic data sets in a bid to better understand the causes of several common human diseases.
Carl's email, profile and project.

Jeffrey Barrett, faculty member.

Jeffrey Barrett - Statistical and computational genetics

Jeffrey develops and applies statistical and computational methods for elucidating the genetic factors in complex human diseases, especially those involving autoimmunity.
Jeffrey's email, profile and project.

Inês Barroso, faculty member.

Inês Barroso - Metabolic disease group

Inês established the Sanger Institute's Metabolic Disease Group, which uses genetic and genomic approaches to understand the aetiology of common and rare forms of metabolic disease.
Inês' email, profile and project.

Alex Bateman, faculty member.

Alex Bateman - Classification of protein and RNA families

Alex's goal is to classify all protein and RNA sequences into families to better understand their function and evolution.
Alex's email, profile and project.

Matt Berriman, faculty member.

Matt Berriman - Parasite genomics

Matt leads a programme in the genomics of neglected tropical disease parasites, including helminths such as Schistomosomes, tapeworms, roundworms, hookworms, threadworms and whipworms.
Matt's email, profile and project.

Oliver Billker, faculty member.

Oliver Billker - Malaria programme

Oliver uses experimental genetics in rodent models to study the basic biology of malaria parasites and their interactions with host and mosquito vectors.
Oliver's email, profile and project.

Allan Bradley, faculty member.

Allan Bradley - Mouse genomics

Allan is Director of the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute. He leads the Mouse Genomics Team, which uses the mouse as a model system to investigate the function of individual genes.
Allan's email, profile and project.

Nigel Carter, faculty member.

Nigel Carter - Molecular cytogenetics

Nigel leads the Molecular Cytogenetics Team, which has research interests in chromosome rearrangement, chromosome organisation, karyotype evolution and has developed the clinical database, DECIPHER.
Nigel's email, profile and project.

Panos Deloukas, faculty member.

Panos Deloukas - Genetics of complex traits in humans

Panos leads the Genetics of complex traits in humans Group, whose focus is on coronary artery disease and myocardial infarction.
Panos's email, profile and project.

Gordon Dougan, faculty member.

Gordon Dougan - Microbial pathogenesis

Gordon is the Board of Management representative for the area of pathogens and head of the Microbial pathogenesis group, which investigates the relationship between pathogens and hosts.
Gordon's email, profile and project.

Richard Durbin, faculty member.

Richard Durbin - Genome informatics

Richard has worked on many areas of biological sequence analysis, and currently focuses on studying human genetic variation by genome-wide resequencing using new sequencing technologies.
Richard's email, profile and project.

Andy Futreal, faculty member.

Andy Futreal - Cancer genome project

Andy is joint head of the Institute's Cancer Genome Project. His focus is on the molecular genetics of cancer and the identification of cancer-causing genes.
Andy's email, profile and project.

Seth Grant, faculty member.

Seth Grant - Genes to cognition

Seth's primary research is on the basic mechanisms of behaviour and the diseases of the brain.
Seth's email, profile and project.

Tim Hubbard, faculty member.

Tim Hubbard - Vertebrate genome analysis

Tim is the Board of Management representative for Bioinformatics. He leads the Vertebrate Genome Analysis group, which generates and presents core vertebrate genome annotation and maintains the reference genome sequences.
Tim's email, profile and project.

Matthew Hurles, faculty member.

Matthew Hurles - Genome dynamics and evolution

Matt leads a major initiative to characterise structural variation in the human genome, and integrate this knowledge into disease and population genetics.
Matthew's email, profile and project.

Paul Kellam, faculty member.

Paul Kellam - Virus Genomics

Paul's laboratory investigates virus genetic variation and virus-host cell interactions. He is a Professor of Viral Pathogenesis at University College London.
Paul's email, profile and project.

Dominic Kwiatkowski, faculty member.

Dominic Kwiatkowski - Malaria programme

Dominic leads the Sanger Institute Malaria Programme, which uses genomic and genetic approaches to discover molecular mechanisms of host-parasite interactions.
Dominic's email, profile and project.

Pentao Liu, faculty member.

Pentao Liu - Mouse Cancer genetics

Pentao's laboratory studies cancer and mouse development. He uses a range of genetic, genomic and biochemical approaches in the lab and develops novel technologies to facilitate the lab's studies.
Pentao's email, profile and project.

Ville Mustonen, faculty member.

Ville Mustonen - Population genomics of molecular phenotypes

Ville develops population genetic methods for integrated sequencing and functional data to help explain natural variation.
Ville's email, profile and project pages.

Aarno Palotie, faculty member.

Aarno Palotie - Genetics of common neurological diseases

Aarno's group is mainly involved in projects investigating the genetic predisposition of traits affecting the central nervous system, particularly migraine, multiple sclerosis and intracerebral aneurysms.
Aarno's email, profile and project.

Julian Parkhill, faculty member.

Julian Parkhill - Pathogen genomics

Julian uses high-throughput sequencing and phenotyping to study pathogen diversity and variation, how they affect virulence and transmission, and what they tell us about the evolution of pathogenicity and host interactions.
Julian's email, profile and project.

Leena Peltonen, faculty member.

Leena Peltonen - Genome-wide profiling of human diseases

Leena was the Board of Management representative for the area of Human Genetics and leader of the Genome-wide profiling of human diseases group. Sadly Leena died on 11 March 2010. [Read obituary]
Leena's email, profile and project.

Julian Rayner, faculty member.

Julian Rayner - Malaria programme

Julian's lab investigates the molecular details of human-parasite interactions during the P. falciparum blood stages, with a particular focus on genomic and proteomic approaches to understanding erythrocyte invasion and how that process is influenced by natural genetic variation in both host and parasite.
Julian's email, profile and project.

Manj Sandhu, faculty member.

Manj Sandhu - Genetic Epidemiology

Manj's interests focus on developing epidemiological resources to examine the genetic determinants underlying the interrelation between infectious and metabolic risk factors and diseases among populations.
Manj's email and profile

Bill Skarnes, faculty member.

Bill Skarnes - Mouse developmental genetics

Bill is project leader of the EU and National Institutes of Health (NIH) high-throughput gene knockout programmes and is exploiting embryonic stem cell technologies to study cell fate decisions in the early mouse embryo.
Bill's email, profile and project.

Nicole Soranzo, faculty member.

Nicole Soranzo - Genomics of quantitative variation

Nicole's team works to expand discovery of novel genetic loci for intermediate cardiovascular endpoints through associations of common and rare DNA variation with biochemical and physiologic intermediate phenotypes.
Nicole's email, profile and project.

Karen Steel, faculty member.

Karen Steel - Genetics of deafness

Karen studies the genetics of deafness, using the mouse as a model to identify the genes involved and to understand the molecular, cellular and physiological mechanisms involved.
Karen's email, profile and project.

Derek Stemple, faculty member.

Derek Stemple - Vertebrate development and genetics

Derek's team works on a range of projects related to growth and development and human disease, using the model organisms X. tropicalis and the zebrafish.
Derek's email, profile and project.

Michael Stratton, faculty member.

Michael Stratton - Cancer genome project

Mike is Deputy Director of the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute, where he is joint head of the Cancer Genome Project, which aims to elucidate the genetic causes of human cancers.
Michael's email, profile and project.

Chris Tyler-Smith, faculty member.

Chris Tyler-Smith - Human evolution

Chris investigates the genetic variation in human populations and the insights this provides into human evolution.
Chris' email, profile and project.

Gavin Wright, faculty member.

Gavin Wright - Cell surface signalling laboratory

Gavin's research focuses on taking large-scale systematic approaches to identify novel receptor-ligand pairs that initiate intercellular signalling.
Gavin's email, profile and project.

Eleftheria Zeggini, faculty member.

Eleftheria Zeggini - Applied statistical genetics

Ele's research addresses design, analysis and interpretation issues in large-scale association and resequencing studies by assessing the performance of different strategies, developing new tools, proposing guidelines and applying these to real complex disease datasets.
Ele's email, profile and project.