Our Mission

Jim Wilson is Professor of Human Genetics at the University of Edinburgh. After a year working with Svante Pääbo in Bavaria, Jim went to New College in Oxford where he completed a DPhil in human population genetics with David Goldstein. Jim then took up a Royal Society University Research Fellowship in Edinburgh.

He has published over 200 peer-reviewed journal articles, 43 of which were in the top genetics journal Nature Genetics, 10 in Nature and 2 in Science: he is a Thomson-Reuters highly cited researcher, and has an h-index of 65.

Jim initiated two large genetic epidemiology studies in northern Scotland: these platform resources for health research benefit from rich phenotyping, deep genotyping, a tissue biobank and prospective follow up through record linkage and have contributed to the discovery of over 1000 novel associations.

Jim also leads a number of international genetics consortia, regularly contributes to documentaries on genetics and has been involved in the genetic ancestry testing business for over a decade.

Dr. Tatarinova is computational biologist with over 20 years of research and teaching experience. For eight years, Tatiana worked at Ceres, Inc., a biotech company in Thousand Oaks, where she became the inventor of 15 U.S. and European patents and developed multiple algorithms for analysis and annotation of plant genomes.

In 2009-2012, Dr. Tatarinova led the Glamorgan Computational Biology Research group at the University of South Wales (United Kingdom). The group was engaged in the plant barcoding efforts, annotation of the oil palm genome, analysis of bacterial evolution, and other projects. In 2013-2017 Tatiana worked at the University of Southern California as an Associate Professor of Research, where her main focus was development of algorithms for provenance prediction. In 2017 Tatiana joined the University of La Verne as Fletcher Jones Endowed Chair in Computational Biology.

Tatiana’s current project include: ancient DNA analysis and paleo-genomics and annotation of plant and animal genomes. Tatiana maintains active collaborations with a number of international research organizations and universities. She organizes international field trips of La Verne students to South East Asia – International Rice Research Institute and Malaysian Palm Oil Board.

Harold Snieder is Professor of Genetic Epidemiology and heads the Unit of Genetic Epidemiology & Bioinformatics at the Department of Epidemiology, University Medical Center Groningen (Netherlands).

He is an expert in design and analysis of genetic and epigenetic epidemiological studies of common complex diseases with a focus on cardiometabolic and renal disease. His group has extensive expertise in quality control, statistical analysis and bioinformatic follow-up of (epi)genome-wide association study (GWAS and EWAS) data.

Harold has published more than 350 articles in peer-reviewed journals. He is a regular reviewer for funding agencies such as NIH and NWO and for journals such as Circulation, Hypertension, Diabetes and Psychosomatic Medicine.

Vassilis Georgiadis is a Principal Partnerships Manager for Pharma & Healthcare at University College London’s Innovation & Enterprise office. He works on developing strategic partnerships, with a focus on life science, pharma, biotech, medtech, healthcare and consumer healthcare sectors, between UCL researchers and external commercial partners, as well as government and NGOs.

Previously, Vassilis was one of the founding members of Molecular Warehouse, a UK molecular diagnostics and digital health company, serving as its Director of Operations and Head of Business Development. Following that, he joined the Business & Innovation Group of UCL’s Translational Research Office, where he worked on establishing industrial research collaborations through a faculty-facing role.

Vassilis is a molecular and cell biologist by training, with more than 10 years of academic research in various biomedical areas. Vassilis studied for a BSc in Genetics at Queen Mary University, followed by an MSc in Clinical Neurosciences at UCL and a DPhil in Cell Biology at the University of Sussex.

Dr. Savaş is the founder and director of the Gentest Institute in Istanbul. The institute’s work focuses on public health genomics, personalised medicine, and developing innovative solutions for the prevention of major chronic diseases and their complications.

Dr. Savaş’s education covers medicine (Istanbul Medical School), law (Istanbul Law School), public health (London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine), health economics, and health policies (London School of Economics and Political Sciences).

Early in his career, Dr. Savaş served at the Turkish Ministry of Health as Adana Provincial Health Director, World Bank Project Coordinator, and Deputy Undersecretary in charge of health reforms. He joined the World Health Organisation’s European Office in Copenhagen in 1994 as the Regional Advisor for Health Care Policies and Systems. Later he was promoted to the position of European Programme Director, a post he held until his departure from the WHO.

For the past 20 years, Dr. Savaş has pursued the concept of personalised healthcare. His goal is to make these services more predictive, preventive, and comprehensive, as well as precise, evidence-based, and participatory – not only in Turkey but also in Europe and around the globe.

Over the years, Dr. Savaş has been honored with awards and decorations by several European countries for his work in public health.