Sónia Gonçalves

Head of MAVE Operations, Cellular Operations

Sónia is Head of MAVE Operations, a flagship strategic initiative at the Wellcome Sanger Institute dedicated to mapping the functional impact of every human gene variant. Through the generation of genome-wide variant effect maps, the programme seeks to transform biological research, inform drug discovery, and inform clinical practice.

About Sónia

In her role, Sónia leads the end-to-end operational strategy for generating large-scale multiplexed assays of variant effect (MAVEs), developing robust, reproducible, and scalable pipelines that integrate advanced saturation gene-editing technologies with cutting-edge computational workflows. She works closely with scientific, operational, and data teams to deliver high-quality, well-curated datasets that enable research across the Sanger Institute and the wider scientific community.

Previous work

Previously, Sónia was Head of Global Operations in the Genomic Surveillance Unit, where she oversaw large-scale operations delivering infectious disease genomic surveillance to national and international partners. She led the end-to-end generation of COVID-19 and malaria genomic data, including the delivery of a national SARS-CoV-2 sequencing service to UK-HSA that produced more than 3 million viral genomes. Within the MalariaGEN programme, she managed global operations generating genomic data for over 20,000 malaria parasite and vector samples each year, and led decentralisation efforts to build genomic surveillance capacity in endemic countries.
Sónia holds a PhD in Plant Biology from Universidade Nova de Lisboa. Before joining the Wellcome Sanger Institute, she served as Head of the AgroGenomics Research Group and Chief Executive Officer at the Centro de Biotecnologia Agrícola e Agro-Alimentar do Alentejo (CEBAL) in Portugal.

My timeline

• Head MAVE Operations, Cell Operations, Wellcome Sanger Institute, UK

• Head Global Operations - Genomic Surveillance Unit, Wellcome Sanger Institute, UK

• Head Service Delivery - Genomic Surveillance, Genomic Surveillance Unit, Wellcome Sanger Institute, UK

• Senior Scientific Manager, Wellcome Sanger Institute, UK

• Chief Executive Officer, CEBAL, Portugal

• Principal Investigator, Head of AgroGenomics Group, CEBAL, Portugal

• Post Doctoral Fellow, NOVA University of Lisbon, Portugal

• PhD in Biology, NOVA University of Lisbon, Portugal / Institute Paper Science and Technology, USA/ University Malaga, Spain

• BSc in Plant Biology, Faculty of Sciences of the University of Lisbon