Rachel M. Freathy is a Wellcome Trust Senior Research Fellow and Professor of Human Genetics at the University of Exeter, UK. She leads a multidisciplinary team investigating the genetics of early growth. She has led studies that have identified more than 250 regions of the human genome where genetic variants influence birth weight or placental weight. These studies have illuminated genetic links with Type 2 diabetes in later life. Her team's research also uses genetic variation to ascertain which modifiable maternal factors influence birth weight or placental weight. Rachel leads the Early Growth Genetics (EGG) Consortium and is a founding member of the Genetics of Diabetes in Pregnancy (GenDiP) Consortium. In 2019, she was awarded the 15th International Joseph Hoet Research Award for excellence in the field of diabetes and pregnancy.
David M. Evans is an NHMRC Leadership Fellow and Professor of Statistical Genetics at the University of Queensland Institute for Molecular Bioscience. He is a winner of the NHMRC Marshall and Warren Award. He completed his PhD in Statistical Genetics at the University of Queensland in 2003 before undertaking a four-year post-doctoral fellowship at the Wellcome Trust Centre for Human Genetics, University of Oxford. In 2007, he moved to take up a Senior Lecturer position at the University of Bristol where he led much of
the genome-wide association studies work in the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children (ALSPAC). In 2013, he returned to take up a chair at the University of Queensland whilst continuing to lead an MRC Programme in statistical genetics at the University of Bristol. His research interests include the genetic mapping of complex traits and diseases (including birthweight and other perinatal traits, osteoporosis, ankylosing spondylitis, sepsis, laterality) and the development of statistical methodologies in genetic epidemiology including approaches to gene mapping, individual risk prediction, causal modelling and dissecting the genetic architecture of complex traits.
Dr. Gunn-Helen Moen is currently an ARC DECRA fellow at the Institute for Molecular Bioscience, University of Queensland. Dr. Gunn-Helen Moen was awarded her PhD on the “Genetic and environmental etiology of glucose metabolism and cardiometabolic traits during pregnancy and in later
life” in 2019 from the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Oslo. After finishing her PhD, she was awarded a Mobility/Marie Sklodowska-Curie Fellowship from the Research Council of Norway, and as part of that fellowship, she spent two years as a visiting academic at the University of Queensland. Her research focus is on using Mendelian randomization to investigate the possible causal effects of maternal environmental exposures during pregnancy on offspring outcomes.
