Ludmila Prokunina-Olsson

Prokunina-Olsson received an M.Sc. in molecular genetics from Moscow State University.[2] She earned a Ph.D. in medical genetics from Uppsala University Faculty of Medicine in 2004.[2] Her dissertation was titled Strategies for identification of susceptibility genes in complex autoimmune diseases.[3] Marta Alarcon-Riquelme was her doctoral advisor and Juha Kere was an opponent of her dissertation.[3]

During 2005 to 2008, she was a visiting fellow with Francis Collins in the genome technology branch of the National Human Genome Research Institute.[2] Prokunina-Olsson joined the Laboratory of Translational Genomics (LTG) of the division of Cancer Epidemiology and Genetics (DCEG) as a research fellow in June 2008.[2] She became a tenure-track investigator in April 2010 and was awarded National Institutes of Health (NIH) scientific tenure and promoted to senior investigator in December 2014.[2] She became acting chief of LTG in February 2018 and was appointed as chief in December 2018.[2] Prokunina-Olsson explores the connections between the genome-wide association studies (GWAS)-identified genetic susceptibility variants and molecular phenotypes of importance for cancer.[2] Some of her findings have resulted in translational and clinical applications.[2]