Trudy Mackay, the Self Family Endowed Chair of Human Genetics at Clemson University in South Carolina, has been awarded the Darwin-Wallace Medal from the Linnean Society of London. The annual award, considered one of the field’s top international prizes, honors outstanding research in evolutionary biology.
Dr. Mackay’s research aims to understand the genetic and environmental factors affecting variation in quantitative traits, using the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster as a translational model system. Her work has advanced research on how to predict adaptive evolutionary responses to changing environments, understand and predict human health and disease, and precisely breed domestic animals and crops.
At Clemson, Dr. Mackay serves as the director of the Center for Human Genetics and a professor of genetics and biochemistry. Before joining the Clemson faculty, she taught at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland and North Carolina State University. She is an elected member of several prestigious professional organizations, including the National Academy of Medicine, the National Academy of Science, the International Engineering and Technology Institute, and the American Philosophical Society.
Dr. Mackay received her bachelor’s degree in biology and her master’s degree in genetics from Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia. She holds a Ph.D. in genetics from the University of Edinburgh.