Peter Donnelly
Sir Peter James Donnelly (born 15 May 1959) is an Australian-British mathematician and Professor of Statistical Science at the University of Oxford, and the CEO of Genomics PLC. He is a specialist in applied probability and has made contributions to coalescent theory. His research group at Oxford has an international reputation for the development of statistical methodology to analyze genetic data. Background, family and education. Peter James Donnelly was born and raised in Brisbane, Queensland, the son of financial adviser, economic theorist and author Austin Donnelly and Sheila Donnelly. He is the brother of Sharon Donnelly and  of eminent Australian financier, funds manager and company director Melda Donnelly. He was educated at St. Joseph's Christian Brothers College, Gregory Terrace, and later at the University of Queensland and at Balliol College, Oxford. Professional life. When elected to a chair at Queen Mary College, London in 1988 Donnelly was only 29. He held a chair at the University of Chicago (1994–96) and was head of the Department of Statistics at the University of Oxford from 1996 to 2001. From 2007 to 2018, he was Director, Wellcome Trust Centre for Human Genetics (WTCHG) in Oxford. He is a fellow  at St Anne's College, Oxford. Many leading statistical geneticists worked with Donnelly as young researchers including David Balding, Matthew Stephens and Jonathan Pritchard. One area in which he has a leading reputation is in the interpretation of DNA evidence. He has acted as an expert witness on forensic science in criminal trials. He is noted for his collaborative work with biologists. He has been heavily involved in a number of large scale projects, such as the International HapMap Project and the Wellcome Trust Case Control Consortium, a genome-wide association study. In 2015, Donnelly was elected as Chairman of  the Royal Society's Machine Learning Working Group Awards and honours. Donnelly was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 2006 and also elected as a Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences in 2008. Other significant awards and honours have included: Donnelly was knighted in the 2019 Birthday Honours for services to the understanding of human genetics in disease.