Current HUGO Council Members in alphabetical order.

Prof Stylianos E. Antonarakis, Switzerland (2010-2012/ Term 3)
Stylianos Antonarakis is the Director of the Division of Medical Genetics at the University of Geneva in Switzerland. Before moving to Geneva he was a professor at Johns Hopkins University in the USA. His lab participates in many projects involving the genetics of monogenic and polygenic disorders as well as the annotation of the human genome and particularly of human chromosome 21. He is on the editorial board of many high profile journals such as Genome Research and Genomics and has recently served as president of the European Society for Human Genetics. He has published more than 470 papers in peer-reviewed journals since 1982.

Dr Elspeth Bruford, UK (2009-2011/ Term 2)
Elspeth A. Bruford received her Ph.D. mapping retinal diseases at the MRC Human Genetics Unit, Edinburgh. After working in publishing, she moved to University College London in 1998 to join the HUGO Gene Nomenclature Committee, of which she is now the Project Co-ordinator. From 2000-2007 she was also the Managing Editor of the Annals of Human Genetics. In 2007 Elspeth gained funding from the Wellcome Trust and NHGRI to relocate the HGNC to the European Bioinformatics Institute at Hinxton, UK. Elspeth plays an active role in the annotation of the human genome, including collaborations with all the major human genome sequencing centres and participation in the H-Invitational, and has attended all of the last eight HGM meetings.

Prof Ruth Chadwick, UK (2011-2013/ Term 1)
Ruth Chadwick is Director of the ESRC (Economic and Social Sciences Research Council) Centre for Economic and Social Aspects of Genomics (Cesagen), Cardiff University, UK. She also holds a Link Chair between Cardiff Law School and the School of English, Communication and Philosophy (ENCAP). She has co-ordinated a number of projects funded by the European Commission, including the EUROSCREEN projects (1994-6; 1996-9) and co-edits the journal Bioethics and the online journal Genomics, Society and Policy. She is Chair of the Human Genome Organisation Ethics Committee and has served as a member of several policy-making and advisory bodies, including the Panel of Eminent Ethical Experts of the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations (FAO), and the UK Advisory Committee on Novel Foods and Processes (ACNFP). She was editor-in-chief of the award winning Encyclopedia of Applied Ethics (1998), of which a second edition is now being prepared. She is an Academician of the Academy of Social Sciences and a Fellow of the Hastings Center, New York; of the Royal Society of Arts; and of the Royal Society of Medicine. In 2005 she was the winner of the World Technology Network Award for Ethics for her work on the relationship between scientific developments and ethical frameworks.

Dr Aravinda Chakravarti, USA (2011-2013/ Term 1)
Aravinda Chakravarti, Ph.D. is Director, Center for Complex Disease Genomics and Professor of Medicine, Pediatrics, Molecular Biology & Genetics, and, Biostatistics at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and the Bloomberg School of Public Health. He is the immediate Past-President of the American Society of Human Genetics, a member of the US National Academy’s Institute of Medicine and an Honorary Fellow of the Indian Academy of Sciences. He has been a key participant and architect of the Human Genome, HapMap and 1000 Genomes project.

He received his undergraduate degree in Statistics and Mathematics from the Indian Statistical Institute in Calcutta, India in 1974, his doctoral degree in human genetics from the University of Texas Health Science Center in Houston in 1979 and continued postdoctoral training at the University of Washington in Seattle during 1979-80. He started his faculty career at the University of Pittsburgh (1980 – 1993), was the James H. Jewell Professor of Genetics at Case Western Reserve University (1994-2000), and the inaugural Director and Henry J. Knott Professor of the McKusick-Nathans Institute of Genetic Medicine at Johns Hopkins (2000-2007). Dr. Chakravarti is one of the founding Editors-in-Chief of Genome Research and Annual Reviews of Genomics & Human Genetics, serves on the Advisory and Editorial Boards of numerous international journals, boards, academic societies, the NIH and biotechnology companies. His research is aimed at genome-scale analysis of humans and computational analysis of gene variation and function to understand the molecular genetic basis of human disease.

Dr. Chakravarti has been working with Indian scientists and the Government of India (DBT and CSRI) since 2000 to help develop the genetic and genomic sciences in India. He has been instrumental in championing efforts to establish the new National Institute of BioMedical Genomics in Kalyani, West Bengal and India’s participation in the International Cancer Genome Atlas and the 1000Genomes Projects. Starting in 2010, he has been working with Dr. Purnendu Chatterjee and Mr. Swadesh Chatterjee (in co-operation with Johns Hopkins University) to establish The Institute of Molecular Medicine (IMM) as a private, not-for-profit research and educational institution in Delhi, India. The vision is to create a major center of discovery and develop a world-class science and educational research organization with expertise in and emphasis on biological, chemical and computational approaches to biomedical research. The IMM will develop substantial expertise in the basic sciences to allow innovation in translations and applications to human disease with high relevance to diagnostics and therapy. The IMM will actively collaborate and partner with international research and clinical institutions, including foundations, to achieve this goal. The IMM will also pursue a major educational mission providing state-of-the-art meetings and courses in biomedicine, with local and international faculty, for the benefit of practicing scientists and graduate trainees in South Asia and beyond.

Dr David R. Cox, USA (2009-2011, Term 3)
David serves as Chief Scientific Officer for BBC's newly-created Target Generation Unit. This new unit brings together human genetics, systems biology, and cell biology, combining internal capabilities with outside collaborations, to focus on increasing preclinical target validation with the aim of significantly improving clinical survival. David is a co-founder of Perlegen, and was most recently Chief Scientific Officer of the company since its formation in 2000. David was Professor of Genetics and Pediatrics at the Stanford University School of Medicine as well as the co-director of the Stanford Genome Center. He obtained his A.B. and M.S. degrees from Brown University in Rhode Island and his M.D. and Ph.D. degrees from the University of Washington, Seattle. He completed a Pediatric Residency at the Yale-New Haven Hospital in New Haven, Connecticut and was a Fellow in both genetics and pediatrics at the University of California, San Francisco. David is certified by the American Board of Pediatrics and the American Board of Medical Genetics. He was an active participant in the large scale mapping and sequencing efforts of the Human Genome Project while carrying out research involving the molecular basis of human genetic disease. David has been a member of several commissions and boards, including the National Bioethics Advisory Commission (NBAC) and the Health Sciences Policy Board of the Institute of Medicine. He has also served on a number of international committees, including the Council of the Human Genome Organization (HUGO). He has authored over 100 peer-reviewed scientific publications and has served on numerous editorial boards. Dr. Cox's honors include election to the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences.

Prof Takashi Gojobori (2011-2013/ Term 1)
Takashi Gojobori, a Japanese molecular biologist, is Vice-Director of the National Institute of Genetics (NIG) and Professor at Center for Information Biology and DNA Data Bank of Japan (DDBJ) in NIG, Mishima, Japan. He has also been co-appointed as the Special Research Consultant of the National Institutes of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST), as a Visiting Professor of Keio University and as a Visiting Research Director of RIKEN.

After finishing his Ph.D. (1979) at Kyushu University, Japan, he was Research Associate and Research Assistant Professor at the University of Texas at Houston for 4 years (1979-1983). He was also Visiting Assistant Professor at Washington University in St. Louis (1985, 1986) and Visiting Research Fellow at the Imperial Cancer Research Fund (ICRF) in London (1989).

He has been elected Academician member of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences in the Vatican (2007) and Foreign Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (2006) and Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) (2006). He has received the Gaetano Salvatore Gold Medal from Italy (2004) and some of the major Japanese awards.

He is the Editor of Gene and FEBS Letters, and Associate Editor of MBE and PLoS Genetics. He has also served on the editorial boards of 6 international journals including Genome Research and BMC Genomics. He was the Editor of JME for 8 years (1995-2003).

He has 321 publications in peer-reviewed international journals, as of October 31, 2007. He has worked extensively on the rates of synonymous and non synonymous substitutions, positive selection, horizontal gene transfer, viral evolution, genomic evolution, and comparative gene expressionics. In recent years, he has focused on the evolution of the brain and CNS.

He has contributed to the DDBJ/GenBank/EMBL database construction as well as the H-Invitational human gene database.

He has been served as the Program Director of the Council for Science and Technology Policy (CSTP) of the Government of Japan. He is also the Science Officer of the Ministry of Education, Science, Sports, Culture, and Technology (MEXT).

Prof. Gojobori is a Honorary Foreign member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and a Fellow of the AAAS. Pope Benedict XVI appointed Prof. Gojobori as a member of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences (2006).

Dr Yoshihide Hayashizaki, Japan (2009-2011/ Term 1)
Yoshihide Hayashizaki received his M.D. and Ph.D. from Osaka University Medical School in 1982 and 1986, respectively.In 1992, he joined RIKEN, and was appointed Project Director for the RIKEN Genome Project in 1995. Since then he has been taken a transversal data-driven approach to analyze transcriptomes by developing unique technologies including a series of full-length cDNA technologies. With this approach, he has established large amount of full-length cDNA clone bank. This activity was followed by organization of FANTOM (Functional Annotation of Mammalian), an international consortium, originally to annotate a large number of cDNA and subsequently expanded to transcriptome and network analysis. FANTOM activities revealed that more than 63% of the genome — not just the ~1.5% fraction that are protein-coding exons — is transcribed as RNA. In 2008, he appointed to the Director of the Omics Science Center. The center was established to link a variety of omics subdisciplines to molecular networks and pathways in order to advance our understanding of biological phenomena as systems at the molecular level.

Prof Veronica Van Heyningen, UK (2010-2012/ Term 2)
Veronica van Heyningen is a Section Head at the Medical Research Council’s Human Genetics Unit – part of the Institute of Genetics and Molecular Medicine in Edinburgh. She maintains a wide interest in genetic mechanisms and broad aspects of biology that can be gleaned from the study of human genetic disease. For the past two decades she has studied the underlying genes implicated in human developmental eye anomalies. The identification of three major developmental regulator genes: PAX6, SOX2 and OTX2, all implicated in brain as well as eye development, have led to extensive mutational studies in humans and dissection of gene function in model organisms. Detailed patient analysis led to early observations of how chromosomal breakpoints some way outside certain genes can lead to altered expression of those genes, and to the study of distant DNA elements regulating gene expression. Observing the variability and occasional absence of phenotype in cases with known pathological mutations, led us to study mechanisms of phenotype modulation and gene-environment interactions. Comparisons between different model organisms, including humans, also revealed some of the mechanisms of evolutionary change. More than 200 publications along the way have led to funding awards, invitations to participate in interesting meetings and some honours. Veronica van Heyningen was a Beit Memorial fellow immediately after finishing her PhD on early human gene mapping in Oxford under the guidance of Walter Bodmer. She has been a long standing member of HUGO since its earliest days. From 1993, she was a Howard Hughes International Research Scholar for five years, allowing her to build up her group. Since 1995 she has been an Honorary Professor at the University of Edinburgh. She was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh in 1997, a member of EMBO in 2002 and a Fellow of the Royal Society in 2007. She participated in the Human Genetics Commission, which provides advice to the UK government on social and ethical issues in genetics. She is a past President of the European Society of human Genetics and current President of the Genetics Society. She continues to enjoy the fast moving science of human molecular genetics and the mentoring of young scientists entering the field, and has acquired a renewed interest in human development through her grandchildren.

Dr. Gerardo Jimenez-Sanchez, Mexico (2009-2011/ Term 1)
Professor Gerardo Jimenez-Sanchez was born in Mexico City. He is a medical doctor, a certified pediatrician, and holds a PhD in Human Genetics and Molecular Biology from Johns Hopkins and a degree in business administration. He is professor of genomic medicine at the National Autonomous University of Mexico and serves as Chairman of the Working Party on Biotechnology at the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). He is Executive President of the Global Biotech Consulting Group and chairs the initiative on genomics and bioeconomy in Mexico.

Prof. Jimenez was the founder Director of the National Institute of Genomic Medicine (INMEGEN) in Mexico, director of the Mexican Genomic Diversity Project, and Chief Scientific Officer at Biofields. He serves as a Council Member in Biotechnology to the United Nations Secretary General, Member of the Scientific Council for the Grand Challenges in Genomics at the World Health Organization, and Council member of the Human Genome Organization (HUGO). He is the President of HUGO’s Committee of Genomics and Bioeconomy and Board Member for the Public Population Projects in Genomics (P3G).

He is former President of the Mexican Society of Genomic Medicine and President of the I & II National Congress in Genomic Medicine in Mexico. He serves as regional Editor for Latin America and the Caribbean of the HUGO Journal. Prof. Jimenez is member of international scientific societies and has received prestigious awards for research and institutional accomplishments. He is author and co-author of research articles, chapters and books in pediatrics, genomics, and medicine.

Dr Dhavendra Kumar , UK (2010-2012/ Term 1)
Dr. Dhavendra Kumar is Consultant in Clinical Genetics at the University Hospital of Wales and Hon. Senior Research Fellow in the Institute of Medical Genetics, Cardiff University, Cardiff, Wales, United Kingdom. He is the lead Clinical Geneticist for Clinical Cardiovascular Genetics. After qualifying in Medicine from the King George’s Medical College, University of Lucknow, India, he completed postgraduate training in Pediatrics with an MD. Since 1980 he has pursued a career in Medical Genetics in the UK. In 1990 he became a Diplomate of the American Board of Medical Genetics. He is a Fellow of the American College of Medical Genetics (FACMG) and as well as Royal Colleges of Physicians of London (FRCP) and Ireland (FRCPI) and Paediatrics and Child Health (FRCPCH).

He has authored/edited Genetic disorders of the Indian Subcontinent-Springer/Kluwer, 2004; Genomics and Clinical Medicine- Oxford University Press, 2008; Principles and Practice of Clinical Cardiovascular Genetics-Oxford University Press, 2010,and Genomics and Health in Developing Countries, Oxford University Press (In preparation). He has several peer-reviewed publications in pediatrics and clinical genetics. He established and developed a new biomedical journal (Genomic Medicine-Springer) that led to setting up the official journal of the Human Genome Organization (‘The HUGO Journal’). He serves on the editorial board of the HUGO Journal as Editor in Chief. He is also serves as a member of the publications committee of HUGO.

Dr. Kumar’s current clinical and research interests include clinical cardiovascular genetics, applications of genomics in medicine and human health and promoting genetics and genomics for improving the health in emerging economies of the developing world. He is currently actively involved in promoting medical genetics and genomics in developing countries through education programs and establishing a comprehensive database on genomic variation and genetic disorders across several developing countries.

Prof Doron Lancet, Israel (2010-2012/ Term 2)
Prof. Doron Lancet is a genome and bioinformatics researcher at the Weizmann Institute of Science. He headed there the Department of Membrane Research and Biophysics, and is currently Professor at the department of Molecular Genetics, where he studies the genetics and genome organization of the olfactory receptor gene superfamily. Since 1992 Lancet has been active in the Israeli and international genome scenes, and is currently Director of Israel's National Knowledge Center for Genomics, and of the Crown Human Genome Center at the Weizmann Institute. In this realm, his research has included the discovery of genes for monogenic diseases, as well as high throughput SNP scoring for elucidating polygenic diseases and pharmacogenetics. In the realms of bioinformatics, Lancet and group have developed GeneCards, a widely-used web-based human gene compendium. Lancet is a member of the European Molecular Biology Organization (EMBO) since 1996 and of HUGO since 1994. He has won international prizes in the field of olfaction, and is author of more than 180 papers and reviews.

Dr Felix Li Jin, China (2009-2011/ Term 1)
Li Jin is a Chinese geneticist who led the research that concluded that all East Asians, including the Chinese, originated from Africa, adding support to the recent single-origin hypothesis of which he is considered a leading proponent. His team analyzed the Y chromosomes of males around China and compared this group with those of Southeast Asians and Africans. Results of the analysis suggested that Southeast Asia was the first destination of the migration from Africa to Asia which began approximately 60,000 years ago; from there, migrants moved into Southern China, then crossing the Yangtze River to Northern China. The 1998 study, which used genetic markers called microsatellites to compare Chinese populations, did not support an independent origin of Homo sapiens in China. The findings contradict the hypothesis that Peking Man (Homo erectus) was the ancestor of the Chinese people. Jin is a professor and Dean of School of Life Sciences of Fudan University, as well as a professor at the National Human Genome Center in Shanghai. Jin is the principal investigator of East Asian populations for the Genographic Project which collects DNA samples to map historical human migration patterns around the world. His research interests are in human and medical genetics, population genetics, genomics & bioinformatics, anthropology.

Prof Edison T. Liu, Singapore (2010-2012/ Term 2) President
Dr. Edison Liu was born in Hong Kong, China, and emigrated to the United States in 1957. He received his bachelor's degree (Phi Beta Kappa) in chemistry and psychology from Stanford University where he remained to complete his M.D. in 1978. This was followed by internship and residency in internal medicine at Washington University, St. Louis, and clinical cancer fellowships at Stanford University (Oncology), and at the University of California at San Francisco (Hematology). He then pursued post-doctoral studies as a Damon-Runyan Cancer Research Fellow at the University of California at San Francisco in the laboratory of Dr. J. Michael Bishop identifying transforming genes in human leukemic states. In 1987 when he joined the faculty of Medicine at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. There, he developed programs in leukemia and breast cancer research centering on molecular epidemiology and cell signalling. In 2001, Dr. Liu assumed the position of Executive Director, Genome Institute of Singapore which is a flagship programme of the Biomedical Sciences Initiative of Singapore. At the GIS, he is building an international research institute of 300 individuals focused on integrating genomic sciences with cell and medical biology. His scientific investigations have spanned molecular epidemiology to molecular biochemistry of human oncogenes and his current scientific research investigates the dynamics of whole genome gene transcription that explains biological states in cancer.

Prof Mark McCarthy, UK (2011-2013/ Term 2)
Mark McCarthy is Robert Turner Professor of Diabetes at Oxford University, based at the Oxford Centre for Diabetes, Endocrinology and Metabolism (OCDEM) and at the Wellcome Trust Centre for Human Genetics. His work on the genetics and genomic basis of type 2 diabetes seeks to define the relationship between genetic variation, environment, intermediate phenotypes, and clinical disease, in the belief that such information will translate into a significant impact on clinical care for people with diabetes, through more rational and effective deployment of available preventative and therapeutic modalities.
He obtained his medical degree at the University of Cambridge and postgraduate clinical training in general medicine, diabetes and endocrinology at the London Hospital. Following research training with – amongst others – Newton Morton and Eric Lander, he took up an appointment as Senior Lecturer (subsequently Professor in Genomic Medicine) at Imperial College in 1995, moving to Oxford as the Robert Turner Professor of Diabetes in 2002. In the past decade, his group has become established as one of the leading international teams working on the genetics of T2D, with expertise extending from physiological characterisation through to high-throughput genomic analysis and related issues in computational biology. Prof McCarthy currently leads the T2D component of the Wellcome Trust Case Control Consortium, and has been intimately involved in many of the recent discoveries generated by the application of genome wide association approaches to diabetes, obesity and related traits. His group is increasingly involved in efforts to understand how such information can be translated into advances in clinical management, and in extending these studies beyond the European context. He has a strong commitment to the wider research community, having served as a member and chair of the Diabetes UK Research Committee, and on Wellcome and MRC panels. He serves on the Editorial Board of Diabetes, Diabetologia, PLoS Medicine, Human Molecular Genetics and several other journals.

Dr Stephen W. Scherer, Canada (2009-2011/ Term 2)
Dr. Stephen Scherer, PhD, at The Hospital for Sick Children and University of Toronto, has made numerous contributions towards understanding the composition of the human genome for studies of genetic disease. His recent work characterizes structural variation in the human genome, and examines the role genetics has in autism. Long-standing endeavours include the study of human chromosome 7 as a model of the chromosomal basis of disease, and building genomics infrastructure to facilitate biomedical research. He has published over 200 peer-reviewed articles and won numerous awards including an Honorary Doctorate (University of Windsor), Canada's Top 40 Under 40 Award, and the 2004 Steacie Prize in the Natural Sciences. He is an Investigator of the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, International Scholar of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, and currently chairs Genome Canada's Science Advisory Board.

Dr Todd Taylor, Japan (2010-2012/ Term 2)
Todd Taylor is Team Leader of the MetaSystems Research Team in the Computational Systems Biology Research Group at RIKEN Advanced Science Institute, Yokohama, Japan. His team's main area of research is the analysis of and development of tools for metagenomic sequence data derived from various human health- and environmental-related microbial communities. He has been a research scientist at RIKEN since 1998, and received his Ph.D. in Molecular and Medical Genetics from Oregon Health Sciences University, Portland, Oregon. During graduate school he conducted linkage analysis studies for various disorders and was responsible for the initial identification and mapping of the locus for Hallervorden-Spatz syndrome, a rare autosomal recessive disorder. As an active member of the International Human Genome Sequencing Consortium, Todd served as coordinator for chromosomes 11, 18p, and 21. He also helped to coordinate the finishing of chimpanzee chromosomes 22 and Y. Todd has been a HUGO member since 1999 and has served on the HUGO council since 2006.

Dr Martin Vingron, Germany (2010-2012/ Term 1)
Martin Vingron is a director at the Max Planck Institute for Molecular Genetics in Berlin, Germany, and honorary professor at Freie Universität Berlin. He studied Mathematics at Vienna University in Austria and received his PhD degree in 1991 from Heidelberg University and EMBL in Heidelberg, Germany. He did two postdocs, at USC in Los Angeles and at the German National Research Center for Computer Science (GMD) near Bonn, respectively. From 1995 to 2000 he was as Head of the Division of Theoretical Bioinformatics at Deutsches Krebsforschungszentrum (DKFZ), In 2000 he took his current position as Director at the Max Planck Institute for Molecular Genetics, Department of Computational Molecular Biology. Since 2006 he has also acted as a director of the CAS-MPG Partner Institute for Computational Biology (PICB) in Shanghai, China.

In 2004 Vingron was elected a Member of the German National Academy of Natural Scientists Leopoldina and he received the prestigious Max Planck Research Award. He is the author of more than 100 publications. He works as a referee for both biological and Mathematics/Computer Science journals. Since 2009, Vingron has been Chair of the Steering Committee of the International Conference on Computational Molecular Biology RECOMB. He is on numerous advisory boards for institutions like EMBL-EBI, the Helsinki Institute for Information Technology, or the Computational Biology Unit in Bergen, Norway. His area of expertise is Computational Molecular Biology with an emphasis on transcriptional regulation, applying methods from algorithmics and statistical data analysis.

Prof Emma Whitelaw, Australia (2011-2013/ Term 1)
Emma Whitelaw is a world authority on the study of epigenetic mechanisms controlling gene expression in mammals. Her early studies in Oxford focussed on transcriptional termination and the demonstration (with Nick Proudfoot) that polymerase II release is linked to 3’ end processing. The observation that transgenes are frequently silenced in transgenic mice led to her enduring and productive interest in exploring the mechanisms of epigenetic gene regulation. A most significant early finding was that enhancers act to increase the probability that a gene is transcribed, rather than the rate at which it is transcribed. Over the past decade the Whitelaw group’s work has focussed on understanding their finding that epigenetic states can be inherited to the next generation. The idea that it is more than just DNA that you inherit from your parents was controversial and we spent a number of years collecting evidence in support of this finding. These findings challenge the way we think about the inheritance of phenotypes. The group have gone on to identify other genes that display these effects, including through the use of ENU mutagenesis screens in mice to identify modifiers of epigenetic inheritance. They have shown that epigenetic events play a critical role in normal development and are now deemed by many scientists around the world to be of great significance in human disease and normal biology. There is an increasing realisation that these mechanisms are critical in mediating the influence of environmental factors on gene expression. The Whitelaw lab is engaging with collaborators in the application of their mouse model system findings to the human situation. They collaborate widely with eminent groups in Australia and around the globe.

Emma’s work has been deservedly well-funded and recognised internationally by many invitations to speak world-wide at major meetings. The topic is also of great and increasing public interest and Emma has worked hard to contribute insights at this level too. Emma sits on several grant panels including for the EU 7th framework. She has been awarded the Victor Chang Cardiac Research Institute’s Barbara Ell Medal for the pursuit of excellence in research, and the Julian Wells Medal for an outstanding contribution to Genetics, awarded by The Genome Conference. In 2008 she received the rare accolade of being appointed an NHMRC Australia Fellow at the Queensland Institute of Medical Research.

The topic of Emma Whitelaw’s work is of major interest to HUGO and her eminence in the field will be a real boost to Council’s work. Her passionate interest in the science and her eagerness and ability to convey the significance of the field to a lay audience and to politicians will be a great asset to HUGO’s work.