Professor Melanie Bahlo is the co-Division Head of the Population Health and Immunity Division at the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research. She is a bioinformatician with more than 17 years experience in the areas of statistical genetics, population genetics and bioinformatics. She heads a statistical genetics lab with 10 staff and students. The Bahlo lab works on familial and GWAS studies with microsatellite, SNP chip and next-generation sequencing data (NGS), applied to neurogenetics disorders and malaria. The research work spans both bioinformatics analyses and algorithmic development. Her research lab has produced several pieces of software used world-wide for analysis of data including NGS data analysis, gene co-expression analyses and plasmodium NGS data analysis.

Professor Bahlo is best known for her discoveries in disease genetics including the identification of 10 epilepsy genes and complex disease publications in the fields of Multiple Sclerosis, Hepatitis C and Macular Telangiectasia. She has 129 career publications with an H-index of 38, with more than 7,400 citations (October 2016). In 2009 she won the Australian Academy of Science’s Moran Medal and in 2015 she won the Genetics Society of Australasia’s Ross Crozier Medal for mid-career researchers. She is a current holder of an NHMRC Senior Research Fellowship and a CI on an NHMRC program grant.