DR. PARDIS SABETI, IRAN

Computational biologist, medical geneticist and evolutionary geneticist, who developed a bioinformatic statistical method which identifies sections of the genome that have been subject to natural selection and an algorithm which explains the effects of genetics on the evolution of disease.  

In 2014, Sabeti was part of a team which used advanced genomic sequencing technology to identify a single point of infection from an animal reservoir to a human in the Ebola outbreak in West Africa. The work led her to be named one of TIME Magazine's Persons of the Year in 2014 (Ebola Fighters), and one of its TIME 100 most influential people in 2015.

Sabeti is a full professor in the Center for Systems Biology and Department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology at Harvard University and on the faculty of the Center for Communicable Disease Dynamics at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, and is an institute member at the Broad Institute and an investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute.

Sabeti is also the lead singer and a writer for the rock band Thousand Days.