Brenda Andrews

Yeast geneticist Dr. Brenda Andrews is the program director of CIFAR’s Genetic Networks program. Dr. Andrews and her team of genetic networks researchers study how complex hereditary diseases can be linked not to a single gene, but to the interactions among many, even hundreds, of genes.

Studying the genetics of yeast, she is helping to take our understanding of afflictions such as cancer, heart disease and autism to an entirely new level of complexity and precision. Dr. Andrews is also the director of the Terrence Donnelly Centre for Cellular and Biomolecular Research and is a professor and chair of the Banting and Best Department of Medical Research within the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Toronto.