As determined by the Articles and Bylaws, the members of HUGO constitute the General Assembly, its "supreme body." The executive body for HUGO is the 18-member Council which at the beginning will be constituted by the president, 3 vice-presidents, and 5 elected members of the executive committee established at Montreux, plus 9 members chosen by the membership in an election to be held later this year. The term of service of Councillors will be 3 years (with an option for a single 3-year term in immediate succession). Six Councillors will retire annually; 4 replacements will be elected by the membership and 2 co-opted by the Council.

From among its members, the Council will elect the president and 3 vice-presidents of HUGO. The secretary and treasurer are to be ex officio, nonvoting members of the Council. They will be elected by the Council but may not necessarily be members of HUGO.

HUGO will conduct an election of new members annually. For the election to be held later this year, nominations should be submitted to the Secretary or President. Nominations should be endorsed by 6 HUGO members, no more than 3 of whom can be residents of the same country as the nominee. For council nomination rules and guidelines, please click here

Current HUGO Council Members in alphabetical order.

Dr Samir K. Brahmachari (India)
Dr. Samir K. Brahmachari completed a Ph.D. in Molecular Biophysics and specializes in Structural Biology and Genome Analysis. He is presently the Director of Institute of Genomics & Integrative Biology (IGIB), Delhi under the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research, India. Earlier he was a Professor of Molecular Biophysics and genetic Engineering at Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore.

Institute of Science, Bangalore. Professor Brahmachari has received many prestigious National and International Awards for his contributions in Science. He is a Fellow of Indian National Science Academy and Indian Academy of Science. He was elected a member of the Human Genome Organization, 1991 and to the HUGO Council in 2004; member of various Committees, Govt. of India; member, expert group on Human Rights and Biotechnology, United Nations and member of various International Committees. He has also been involved in issues relating to Genomics research, ethics and Human Rights. As a member of the steering committee of the International Human Rights Commission he has contributed to the formulation of the draft guidelines in terms of benefit sharing by the populations that are the part of the research endeavor as resources of genetic material and addressed issues of unethical exploitation of genetic resources of the Third world. He has contributed significantly in promoting industry-academia interactions through novel program of knowledge partnerships and.

He heads the Functional Genomics Unit at IGIB. He has demonstrated the structural flexibility of DNA and the role of repetitive sequences in DNA transactions much before the discovery of repeats association with genetic disorders. His work on the structural flexibility of telomeric repeat sequences is one of the well-cited contribution. He has made major contribution in molecular analysis of genetic disorders associated with trinucleotide amplification and repetitive sequence instability. Using a combination of structural biology, computational genomics and population based polymorphism scanning he and his group have provided a novel structural frame work for understanding the etiology of several neurological disorders. One of the outcomes of these efforts has been the demonstration that loss of triplet repeat interruption as the primary step in ataxia SCA 2 which is followed by repeat expansion. Dr. Brahmachari and his group also identified a susceptibility locus on chromosome 22 using a novel positional candidate gene approach for schizophrenia and bipolar disorder patients in the Indian population and have for the first time identified a nonsense mutation in synaptogyrin I gene, a component for presynaptic pathway in schizophrenia patients. His group has developed novel in Silico bioinformatics tools to identify functional signature of hypothetical proteins and novel drug targets. For further details visit http://www.igib.res.in/

Prof Anthony Brookes (UK)
Professor Brookes is an internationally recognized leader in genomics and bioinformatics, having made significant contributions to method development, disease and population genetics, DNA variation analysis, and database systems for organizing genomics information. His publications include over 100 peer-reviewed articles and reviews. Most recently, he uncovered a major new aspect of DNA polymorphism comprising abundant copy-number differences for many short and long-range sections of the human genome. Professor Brookes has filed 6 patent applications on cloning, genotyping, and DNA analysis methods, and he has also founded the company DynaMetrix which markets genotyping products and solutions.

Professor Brookes currently holds a Chair in Bioinformatics and Genomics at the University of Leicester in the UK, and an Adjunct Professorship in the Karolinska Institute in Sweden. He serves on the HUGO Council and is an elected member of the HUGO Human Genome Annotation Committee. He additionally acts as communicating Editor for Human Mutation. Other significant achievements include the highly acclaimed international Meeting series on "Single Nucleotide Polymorphism & Complex Genome Analysis", invention of the Dynamic Allele-Specific Hybridization genotyping technology, and creation of the Human Genome Variation database.Professor Brookes began his research career in the UK by studying Medicine and Medical Biochemistry (1st class qualification) at Manchester University, and then a molecular genetics PhD at the Imperial Cancer Research Fund and the University of London. He subsequently established a research group in the MRC Human Genetics Unit in Edinburgh, where amongst other things his team was involved in identifying the Presenilin-1 gene that causes Alzheimers Disease. He then moved to Sweden, first to Uppsala University where he received Docenture in Genetics, and then to the Karolinska Institute where he was awarded both Docenture and a Professorship in Genome Research.

Dr Elspeth Bruford (UK)
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.

Mr Howard Cash (USA)

Howard Cash studied music at the University of Pennsylvania and, after a period as Assistant Conductor with the Pennsylvania Opera Theater, Psychoacoustics at Stanford. From there he moved into computational biology.

He has been at the forefront of commercial bioinformatics since 1984. He joined IntelliGenetics (senior engineer; head of the Expert Systems Group) where some of the seminal biotech software tools were developed. In 1988, he founded Gene Codes Corporation. He designed and developed the "Sequencher" program used in thousands of academic and commercial DNA sequencing labs and runs one of the most successful bioinformatics companies in the world. He was appointed to the Michigan Commission on Genetics, Privacy and Progress to recommended legislation on issues related to genetic information and privacy, chairing the committee on Property Rights, Ownership, Collection, Use and Storage. After 9/11, New York City asked Cash to apply his company resources to develop DNA analysis software for identifying the remains of those killed at the World Trade Center. A daunting task from a technical standpoint, it also raised ethical and legal issues. After the devastating Tsunami of Dec 26, 2004, he worked for five months on the DNA data handling for the international identification effort centered in Phuket, Thailand.

Dr Luis Figuera (Mexico)

Prof Annemarie Poustka Frischauf (Germany)

Prof Elza Khusnutdinova (Russia)
Professor Elza Khusnutdinova is one of the leading molecular geneticists in Russian Federation. She is the Head of Genomics Department of the Institute of Biochemistry and Genetics, Ufa Science Center, Russian Academy of Sciences. She is involved in human genome studies since 1988. The focus of her research is study of genetic variation and genetic history of populations from Russia, North Caucasus and Central Asia using Y-chromosome SNPs and STR markers as well as mtDNA and autosomal loci. The data of her research group were received on typing of more than 15 000 samples of 50 populations including ethnic specific cohorts. Using study samples of patients with hereditary diseases from the Volga-Ural region of Russia the spectrum and frequency of genes mutations responsible for cystic fibrosis, phenylketonuria, Wilson disease, Duchenne muscular dystrophy, Marfan syndrome, non-syndromic hereditary deafness, myotonic dystrophy, Huntington disease, X-fragile syndrome were characterized. She has published over 400 articles and 10 monographs, supervised 64 Ph.D. thesis, won numerous awards, including premium of acad. A.A. Baev for achievements in range of learning "Human Genome" (1999), competition of the best publications in magazines MAIK/SCIENCE, premium of Coordination Advice "Technologies of alive systems" of Russian Academy of Sciences (2001). She has been the member of Russian Fund of Basic Research (RFBR) and INTAS Advisory Committee, member of International Scientific Societies - HUGO and ESHG, member of the Editorial Boards of scientific journals "Molekulyarnaya Biologia" (Russian Journal of Molecular Biology) and "Balkan Journal of Medical Genetics".She has attended all of the last ten HGM meetings.

Prof Doron Lancet (Israel)
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.

Prof Edison Liu (Singapore) 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)
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.

Academy Prof Leena Peltonen-Palotie (Finland)
Professor Leena Peltonen is among leading molecular geneticists world-wide and is one of the pioneers in the use of genetically isolated populations in the genetics-based identification of disease genes. Using study samples from Finland her research group has characterized the genetic background of numerous monogenic diseases and more recently identified tentative allelic variants in dyslipidemias and neuropsychiatric diseases. She has also been pivotal in numerous international research efforts and scientific networks. She has been the member of the international HUGO Council, the member of the UNESCO Bioethics Committee and in the Board of Directors of the American Society of Human Genetic and was President of ESHG for 2004/5. Professor Peltonen returned from UCLA to the University of Helsinki in 2002 and currently leads the Nordic Center of Excellence of Disease Genetics as well as a European Community research program, GENOMEUTWIN (www.genomeutwin.org.) aiming at characterization of genetic and life style risks of common diseases. Dr. Peltonen has received several international science awards, she has produced 390 original publications and 58 review articles and supervised 54 Ph.D. theses.

Dr Boqin Qiang (PRC)
Dr. Boqin Qiang graduated from Shanghai Second Medical University in 1962. He is member of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Professor and Chairman of the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, School of Basic Medicine, Peking Union Medical College and Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences. He is also Director of the Chinese National Human Genome Center, Beijing (CHGB) and head of the scientific committee for the national function genomics project. In the past 10 years, he has made significant contributions in human genome research in China, especially in human genome sequencing project and functional genomics study in medicine. The research interests in his laboratory include the functional and structural analysis of the genes related to neural proliferation, differentiation and apoptosis during normal development and disease.

Dr Hans-Hilger Ropers (Germany)
Hans-Hilger Ropers is Director at the Max-Planck-Institute for Molecular Genetics in Berlin and Professor of Human Genetics at the Humboldt University. Between 1984 and 1997, he headed the Institute for Human Genetics at the University of Nijmegen, The Netherlands, and since 1987, he is board-certified as Clinical Geneticist.

Dr. Ropers served as Chromosome Chair and Co-Chair at several Human Gene Mapping Conferences. He is a member of HUGO since the year of its inception, member of the HGM Scientific Program Committee and of the HUGO Council.

Dr. Ropers is engaged in large-scale, systematic efforts to study the molecular basis of monogenic diseases, with a focus on mental retardation and related disorders. He has served on numerous Editorial Boards and is elected member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences and the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences.

Dr Steve Scherer (Canada)
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 Sumio Sugano (Japan)
Dr. Sumio Sugano is professor at Department of Medical Genome Sciences, Graduate School of Frontier Sciences, The University of Tokyo. He was the leader of FLJ cDNA collection project of Ministry of Economy and International Trade of Japan. Also, he heads the Scientific Research on Priority Areas "Medical Genome Science" of the Ministry of Education, Science, Sports and Culture of Japan. Dr. Sugano's research interests include gene structure and gene expressions, protein functions and application of genomics in disease studies.

Dr Todd Taylor (Japan)
Dr. Todd Duane Taylor is currently Team Leader of the Genome Annotation and Comparative Analysis Team in the Computational and Experimental Systems Biology Group at RIKEN Genomic Sciences Center in Yokohama, Japan. 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. While a graduate student, 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. In addition to constructing the chromosome sequence builds, he conducted various large-scale analyses of the data, including gene annotation. His current research interests include improvement of genome annotation by using a combination of bioinformatic approaches, manual examination and experimental confirmation. His team is also working to develop new tools in areas such as gene and regulatory element identification, and comparative and evolutionary analysis. Todd has been a HUGO member since 1999.

Dr David Valle (USA)
Dr. Valle is Professor of Pediatrics, Medicine, Molecular Biology and Genetics, Ophthalmology, and Biology at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. He received his undergraduate degree in zoology and his medical degree from Duke University. His internship and residency in pediatrics were completed at the Johns Hopkins Hospital. His postdoctoral research in metabolism was done at NIH. Dr. Valle was recently elected to the National Academy of Sciences' Institute of Medicine.

Prof Veronica van Heyningen (UK)

Trained as a geneticist, Veronica van Heyningen has worked in human genetics from early gene mapping during her doctorate, and was an early member of HUGO. She arrived as a postdoc at the MRC Clinical and Population Cytogenetics Unit in 1977 and has progressed to group leader and section head. From 1993-1998 she was a Howard Hughes International Research Scholar, working on the functions of WT1 and PAX6, two disease associated transcription factors identified in international collaborations by positional cloning. A major interest in eye development evolved from pursuing the role of PAX6 in human aniridia and normal eye and brain development. Two other fundamental genes in eye/brain development, SOX2 and OTX2, implicated in anophthalmia and microphthalmia have been identified through local collaborations. Exploring the function and interactions of these genes using human disease phenotypes and model organisms is the major focus of her work currently. Long range genomic regulation of gene expression, and the role of environmental factors in modifying phenotype, are two current areas of exploration to understand genetic mechanisms. Veronica has participated in many grant committees, and also meeting organising committees in the UK and internationally.
She is an honorary Professor at the University of Edinburgh, a Fellow of the Royal Society of London, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh and of the Academy of Medical Sciences; she is a Member of EMBO and was a member of the UK Human Genetics Commission from its inception until the end of 2005. She was President of the European Society of Human Genetics in 2003/2004, and delivered the ESHG Award lecture in 2006.