Fiona is currently the Study Coordinator for Deciphering Developmental Disorders in Africa (DDD-Africa) – Evaluating Clinical Exome Sequencing in an African Setting. She holds a PhD in Human Genetics and is a Medical Scientist registered with the Health Professions Council of South Africa. The DDD-Africa project is based in Johannesburg, South Africa with a secondary recruitment site in Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of Congo.

Fiona is originally from Uganda and has lived and worked in South Africa for over 10 years. Her PhD research at the University of Cape Town and the University of British Columbia focused on Huntington disease in an African population. She joined the Division of Human Genetics at Wits University as a postdoctoral fellow in 2015 to further her research interests in Huntington disease and its phenocopies. Subsequently, she worked on the genetics of breast cancer in African women and then joined the DDD-Africa team in 2018. As study coordinator, she took on a management role and helped to establish many project processes over a two-year period. She has overseen everything project-related, from clinical enrolment of patients and families to finances.

In 2020, Fiona will focus on her position as Medical Scientist at the Division of Human Genetics, University of the Witwatersrand and the National Health Laboratory Service. Her duties as Study Coordinator have officially been handed over in this month of September and it is with gratitude to the H3A Consortium and the Study Coordinators’ working group in particular, that she wishes you all the very best.