Prof. Stylianos E. Antonarakis is a professor and chairman of Genetic Medicine at the University of Geneva Medical School, and director of the iGE3 Institute of Genetics and Genomics of Geneva. He is a member of the scientific council of the Swiss National Science Foundation, and chair of the Genetics panel of the European Research Council. Previously he was the President of the European Society of Human Genetics and President-Elect of the Human Genome Organization for 2013-2016. He received his MD (1975) and DSc (1982) from the University of Athens Medical School. He joined the faculty of Johns Hopkins University in 1983 and rose to full professor of Pediatric Genetics, Biology and Medicine in 1990.
His current interests and research projects involve the functional analysis of the genome, the effect of human genetic variation to phenotypic variation, the molecular pathogenesis of trisomy 21 and polygenic phenotypes, the functional characterisation of the conserved fraction of the genome, diagnostics and prevention of genetic disorders, and the societal implications of genetics and genome research.
He has published more than 660 papers and is listed as one of the highly cited scientists by the ISI institute with more than 51,000 citations. He is a co-editor of the current edition of the classic textbook Genetics in Medicine, has received numerous awards including the commander of the Order of Phoenix medal from the Hellenic Democracy (2007) and the 2019 William Allan Award of the American Society of Human Genetics and is currently the only Greek scientist to have achieved this. He has been supported by grants from the National Institutes of Health, the European Union (including the European Research Council), and the Swiss National Science Foundation and numerous other Foundations including the Gebert and Lejeune Foundations. Lastly, he is also the originator of World Down Syndrome Day.