About Us

Dr Caroline Wright – Head of Science

As Head of Science Caroline Wright works on many of our major projects and is also a regular contributor to our news page. She has expertise in the fields of genetics and molecular biology, and keeps up-to-date with scientific developments that are relevant to medicine and public health.

Caroline was trained as a scientist, with Masters degrees in natural sciences and chemistry and a PhD in biological chemistry from the University of Cambridge. She joined us in mid-2007, following a few years working as a research analyst within the medical devices and biotechnology industries.

Since then, Caroline has focused primarily on two of our flagship projects on genetic test evaluation and non-invasive prenatal diagnosis; co-authoring our reports Evaluation of Diagnostic Tests, which summarises the findings of PHG’s Diagnostic Summit, and Cell-free fetal nucleic acids for non-invasive prenatal diagnosis. She now leads our flagship programme investigating the implications of whole genome sequencing for health and health care systems, particularly the UK NHS, and is also interested in the evaluation of medical risk prediction models and the regulation of direct-to-consumer genetic tests.

Selected recent publications:

• PHG Foundation Genomic Medicine: An independent response to the House of Lords Science and Technology Committee report (2010)
• Wright CF and Kroese M. Evaluation of genetic tests for susceptibility to common complex diseases Human Genetics (2010) 127(2): 125-13
• Wright C, Hall A, Matthews F, Brayne C. Biomarkers, dementia and public health Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences (2009) 118:11-19
• Wright CF & Burton H. The use of cell-free fetal nucleic acids in maternal blood for non-invasive prenatal diagnosis Human Reproduction Update (2009) 15(1): 139-151

Please visit PHG Foundation’s resources page for a list of our publications and other work by members of our staff.