Cecilia Lindgren

Professor Cecilia Lindgren is a Senior Group Leader at the Big Data Institute (BDI), Li Ka Shing Centre for Health Information and Discovery at University of Oxford. She received a Ph.D. in Molecular Genetics from Lund University and continued her career as a visiting researcher at the Whitehead Institute, MIT, USA where she trained in statistical genetics. After post-doctoral work at the Karolinska Institute, she joined the Wellcome Trust Centre for Human Genetics at Oxford University, after which she spent three years as a Scholar in Residence at the Broad Institute of Harvard and MIT before returning to Oxford. Her work has contributed to a substantial furthering of our understanding of the genetic landscape of obesity and fat distribution. In line with this, she is co-chairing a range of large-scale international consortia; the central adiposity team within the GiANT consortium, the Polycystic Ovary Syndrome (PCOS) consortium and she is a co-founder of the international Common Disease Alliance (ICDA), which she also co-chairs with Dr. Lander (the Founding Director of the Broad Institute). She has been awarded numerous awards, including the “Rising Star Award” from European Association for the Study of Diabetes (2010), the “Association for the Study of Obesity’s Obesity and Cardiovascular Health Award” (2011), the inaugural “Leena Peltonen Prize for Excellence in Human Genetics” (2013), ”30th Khwarizmi International Award” (2017) and the American Society of Human Genetics Mentorship Award (2018). Further, she has been listed amongst Thomson Reuters 100 “most highly cited researchers” in Molecular Biology and Genetics consecutively since 2014. Her research focuses on applying genetics and genomics to dissect the etiology of obesity related traits and their relationship with (female) reproductive health.