Our April Alumnus of the Month is Peter Donnelly.
Peter played number 8 for the Wolverines during the 1983-84 season. Earlier this year, he was knighted by Prince Charles for his work in the genetics field. Congrats, Peter!
Tell us about some of your favorite memories as a player or any influential teammates you had?
I loved the season I played rugby at U of M! I grew up in Brisbane, in Australia, and studied there as an undergraduate before moving to Oxford on a Rhodes Scholarship to do a doctorate. At Oxford I played rugby for my college, Balliol, captaining the team in my final year. I moved to U of M in the Fall of 1983 to my first academic job, as a visiting Assistant Professor in the Department of Statistics.
Rugby gave me a great opportunity to meet people and make good friends in Ann Arbor outside my academic colleagues. So many great characters, fun guys, and seriously good rugby players — Dave Weber, Tony Menyhart, Ian Chapman, Tom Raboine, Dale Tuttle, Jeff Hagan, Dan Mascellino, Pete Schwartz, and many more….The standard of rugby was really high, with representatives and internationals in the team. I flitted between playing for the A’s and the B’s. I still remember winter training — 50 or more guys turning up several nights a week from January at the indoor football field to train at some ridiculously late hour. I had to be up and in a classroom first thing the next morning to give lectures on introductory statistics for engineers — definitely not my finest academic hours! Lots of great memories — a tour to NYC, the Big Ten trip to Madison, and the away game in Indiana (Fort Wayne?) on St. Patrick’s Day among others.
What are you doing now?
For most of my career I worked in the academic world. After Michigan I held professorships at the University of Wales (and played club rugby there), the University of London, and then the University of Chicago, before returning to Oxford in 1996 as Head of the Department of Statistics. My academic interests moved from mathematics and statistics into genetics, and I’ve been fortunate to have led many of the large national and international research projects which have transformed our knowledge of the genetic basis of human diseases. Within Oxford I spent 10 years as Director of a large interdisciplinary research institute of 400 scientists working on genetics and its role in disease, and using that information to learn more about how to prevent and treat those diseases. It has been an extraordinary time in the field, and I feel incredibly lucky to have been involved.
Although I’ve been involved in many of the major projects and built some of the large research databases, I realised a few years ago that all this research progress wasn’t having the impact it could on the lives and treatment of patients. So with a few colleagues we recruited some of the brightest minds in the field, and organised ourselves as a start-up. The company, Genomics plc, is now six years old and employs 70 people spread between offices in Oxford and Cambridge in the UK, and soon Boston in the US. In 2018, I stepped down from my role as Director of the Wellcome Centre for Human Genetics in the University to become CEO of the company, and I’ve loved it. Quite a change, and lots to learn, but it has been great. It is clear to me that genetic approaches will have a key, key role in transforming healthcare, by helping us to find better and more efficient drug targets (and by reducing the cost of developing novel therapeutic drugs) and in allowing us to get better in healthcare at targeting prevention, screening, and treatment, informed by a better understanding of the different health risks each of us faces.
My proudest achievement is to have four amazing kids, now aged from 13-29, and to have watched and shared their developing journeys. (Luckily for him, my son is a better rugby player than I ever was!) Family seems particularly important, and so many other things less so, in these difficult times, and I wish all the Michigan Rugby family health and safety amidst COVID-19.
Do you have any other interesting stories to share?
There have been some interesting side trips on my academic journey. I was involved in some of the early court cases trying to get the use of DNA evidence right, and in the appeals of some high-profile miscarriages of justice in the UK because of misrepresentation or misunderstanding of statistical evidence. During the last decade our work has used sophisticated large scale genetic approaches to learn about the history and peopling of Britain, and separately of Spain, over the last few thousand years. It turns out that genetics offers a new light on that history, and has been able to settle a number of historical and archaeological controversies. More recently I have led some of the policy work on the impact of AI and machine learning on society. These have been great opportunities to share some of the excitement of the science with a much wider audience through various media. There is even a TED talk with over a million downloads.
In February I was invited to Buckingham Palace for what is called the Investiture for my Knighthood. I had to kneel in front of Prince Charles (the heir to the throne) who did the thing of tapping me on each shoulder with a sword, then when I stood up, hanging a medal round my neck. (I’ve learnt that the sword tapping ceremony is called “the accolade” and that that is where the original meaning of the word accolade comes from!) The whole day was quite an experience, and lovely to be able to share it with my kids and my partner. They have a more-than-decent art collection at the palace, and an abundance of guys with swords, armour, and a variety of interesting headwear, who come out for these special occasions.
Again, congratulations to our April Alumnus of the Month, Peter Donnelly! Peter, thank you for everything you’ve done for Michigan Rugby.
