Charles Rotimi

Charles Rotimi, PhD, a genetic epidemiologist and a biochemist, is the Director of the NIH Center for Research on Genomics and Global Health (CRGGH), which has the mission of advancing research into the role of culture, lifestyle, genetics, and genomics in disease etiology, health disparities, and variable drug response. His team published the first genome-wide scan for hypertension and blood pressure in African Americans and for type 2 diabetes in West Africans, and his lab contributes to the global understanding of human genetic variation by actively participating in the development of international genomic resources including the HapMap, the 1000 Genome, and the African Genome Variation Projects. He is on the Executive and Scientific Committee for the International Federation of Human Genetics Societies, and he is the founding and current president of the African Society of Human Genetics (AfSHG). Recently, he successfully led the establishment of the Human Heredity and Health in Africa (H3Africa) initiative. With a $50 million commitment from the NIH and Wellcome Trust, H3Africa will create and support a network of labs that will conduct leading-edge research into the genetic and environmental determinants of diseases in Africans.