Vanessa Hayes's Biography

Vanessa Hayes, Professor, J Craig Venter Institute

Vanessa Hayes is a Professor of Genomic Medicine at the J. Craig Venter Institute in San Diego. South African born, she was previously head of the Cancer Genetics Group affiliated with the University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia. Her major research focus is to determine how genetic variation impacts disease at the level of population-wide susceptibility, initiation and development, disease cause and outcome. She uses next generation sequencing and high-throughput genotyping technologies to develop extensive genetic databases of human populations to explore the links between diversity and disease. Her work has revealed genetic causes of HIV/AIDS susceptibility in Southern Africa, and advanced the understanding of genetic susceptibility to prostate cancer in Australian men and more recently also within Africa. Her teams’ research is focusing on defining the extent of human genome diversity and to apply this knowledge to clinical applications.