Mary Lyon Medal 2023 Prof Cecilia Lindgren

The Genetics Society is delighted to announce Prof Cecilia Lindgren, University of Oxford, as the winner of the 2023 Mary Lyon Medal.

Cecilia Lindgren is Director of the Oxford Big Data Institute, University of Oxford, UK, where she is also a Professor of Genomics of Endocrinology and Metabolism, a Wellcome Trust Investigator, and a Senior Research Fellow at St. Anne’s College. She is co-founder and co-chair of the International Common Disease Alliance, aimed at accelerating discovery from genetic maps to biological mechanisms to physiology and medicine.

Her work dissects the genetic landscape of common complex diseases through the integration of large-scale data sets on genomic sequence variation, clinical information and molecular read outs, with a particular focus on endocrine and metabolic traits. In particular, she is recognised for her contribution to the dissections of the genetic underpinnings of obesity, and fat distribution.

Cecilia did her PhD at Lund University, Sweden with Leif Groop, and continued her career as a visiting researcher at the Whitehead Institute, MIT, USA where she trained in statistical genetics with David Altshuler, Mark Daly and Eric Lander. After post-doctoral work at the Karolinska Institute, she joined the Wellcome Trust Centre for Human Genetics at Oxford University to work with Lon Cardon and Mark McCarthy, where she was awarded a Wellcome Trust Research Career Development Fellowship in 2009. Next, in 2012 she was appointed a Scholar in Residence at the Broad Institute of Harvard and MIT, USA before returning to Oxford to join the Big Data Institute with Gil McVean in 2015, where she was appointed Director in 2021.

Cecilia has been awarded numerous awards throughout her career, including the Rising Star Award from the 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), the ”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.

Quote: “I’m really humbled to have been chosen by the Genetics Society for the 2023 Mary Lyon Medal for my research contributions to human genetics. It’s a tremendous recognition that I owe to my team members and collaborators – current & past.”