Ludmila Prokunina-Olsson is a molecular

medical geneticist Medical genetics is the branch tics in that human genetics is a field of scientific research that may or may not apply to medicine, while medical genetics refers to the application of genetics to medical care. For example, research on the caus ...

who conducts genetic and functional analyses downstream of

genome-wide association studies In genomics, a genome-wide association study (GWA study, or GWAS), also known as whole genome association study (WGA study, or WGAS), is an observational study of a genome-wide set of genetic variants in different individuals to see if any varia ...

(GWAS) for various human traits, including cancer, immune and infectious diseases. She is chief of the Laboratory of Translational Genomics (LTG) at the

National Cancer Institute The National Cancer Institute (NCI) coordinates the United States National Cancer Program and is part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), which is one of eleven agencies that are part of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. ...

Life

Prokunina-Olsson received an M.Sc. in

molecular genetics Molecular genetics is a sub-field of biology that addresses how differences in the structures or expression of DNA molecules manifests as variation among organisms. Molecular genetics often applies an "investigative approach" to determine the ...

from

Moscow State University M. V. Lomonosov Moscow State University (MSU; russian: Московский государственный университет имени М. В. Ломоносова) is a public research university in Moscow, Russia and the most prestigious ...

. She earned a Ph.D. in

medical genetics Medical genetics is the branch tics in that human genetics is a field of scientific research that may or may not apply to medicine, while medical genetics refers to the application of genetics to medical care. For example, research on the caus ...

from

Uppsala University Faculty of Medicine The Uppsala University Faculty of Medicine is one of the faculties of Uppsala University, Sweden, and is mainly dedicated to education and research in medicine and related fields of science and practice. Education The ''Uppsala University Faculty ...

in 2004. Her dissertation was titled ''Strategies for identification of susceptibility genes in complex autoimmune diseases''. Marta Alarcon-Riquelme was her doctoral advisor and Juha Kere was an opponent of her dissertation. During 2005 to 2008, she was a visiting fellow with

Francis Collins Francis Sellers Collins (born April 14, 1950) is an American physician-geneticist who discovered the genes associated with a number of diseases and led the Human Genome Project. He is the former director of the National Institutes of Health ( ...

in the genome technology branch of the

National Human Genome Research Institute The National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI) is an institute of the National Institutes of Health, located in Bethesda, Maryland. NHGRI began as the Office of Human Genome Research in The Office of the Director in 1988. This Office transi ...

. Prokunina-Olsson joined the Laboratory of Translational Genomics (LTG) of the division of Cancer Epidemiology and Genetics (DCEG) as a research fellow in June 2008. She became a tenure-track investigator in April 2010 and was awarded

National Institutes of Health The National Institutes of Health, commonly referred to as NIH (with each letter pronounced individually), is the primary agency of the United States government responsible for biomedical and public health research. It was founded in the late ...

(NIH) scientific tenure and promoted to senior investigator in December 2014. She became acting chief of LTG in February 2018 and was appointed as chief in December 2018. Prokunina-Olsson explores the connections between the

(GWAS)-identified genetic susceptibility variants and molecular phenotypes of importance for cancer. Some of her findings have resulted in translational and clinical applications.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Prokunina Olsson, Ludmila Living people 1967 births Place of birth missing (living people) Moscow State University alumni Uppsala University alumni National Institutes of Health people Medical geneticists 21st-century Russian women scientists Russian geneticists Women geneticists Russian emigrants to the United States Expatriate academics in the United States Molecular geneticists Russian medical researchers Women medical researchers Cancer researchers 21st-century Russian biologists