Dr. Pericak-Vance is Director of the John P. Hussman Institute for Human Genomics and Executive Vice Chair of the Dr. John T. Macdonald Foundation Department of Human Genetics at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine. Board certified by the American Board of Medical Specialties in Medical Genetics, she is a founding fellow of the American College of Medical Genetics and an elected member of the National Academy of Medicine. She has produced more than 750 scholarly publications, which have been cited at least 115,428 times in the scientific literature and earned an h-index of 142.
Dr. Pericak-Vance’s laboratory made the seminal discovery of the first association of a common genetic risk variant, the apolipoprotein e4 allele (APOE-4) for late-onset Alzheimer disease, followed closely by the identification of the APOE-2 allele as a genetic protective variant for Alzheimer disease. Many of Dr. Pericak-Vance's efforts are directed towards addressing health disparities in genomics research. She directs several related genetic research projects, one on Alzheimer disease in African Americans and a second on admixed Caribbean Hispanic and Amerindian populations.
In 1997, Newsweek Magazine named her to “The Century Club,” as among the “100 people to watch” as we move to the next millennium Dr. Pericak-Vance is the recipient of numerous awards, including the international "Louis D" Scientific Prize from the Institut de France's Academie des Sciences for her Alzheimer disease research, the Bengt Winblad Lifetime Achievement Award from the Alzheimer's Association and the Snow and Ming Tsuang Lifetime Achievement Award from the International Society of Psychiatric Genetics (ISPG) for her lifelong contribution to psychiatric disease research.
