Janet Kelso
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- L'Oréal-UNESCO Awards for Women in Science (2004)
- Newcomb Cleveland Prize (2010)
- ISCB Fellow (2016)[2]
Janet Kelso | |
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 Janet Kelso speaking at Intelligent Systems for Molecular Biology conference in 2015 | |
| Born | March 24, 1975[1] |
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| Scientific career | |
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| Institutions | Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology |
| Thesis | The development and application of informatics-based systems for the analysis of the human transcriptome (2003) |
| Doctoral advisors | Winston Hide |
| Website | www |
Janet Kelso (born 1975) is a South African computational biologist and Group leader of the Minerva Research Group for Bioinformatics at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology.[1][3][4][5] She is best known for her work comparing DNA from previous humans (i.e. Neanderthals) with those of the present (Homo Sapiens).
A previous challenge for computational biologists was the lack of proper DNA preservation and technology to analyze the nuclear genomes of the ancient humans. This obstacle strengthened Kelso's interest in bioinformatics and initially approached the issue using the reference based method. From there, her and her research team have made advances in research towards ancient DNA.[6]
Kelso gained her Bachelor of Science degree from the University of Natal in 1995 followed by Honours and Master of Science degrees in medical biochemistry and chemical pathology from the University of Cape Town in 1997 and 2000, respectively.[1] She received her PhD in bioinformatics in 2003, from the University of the Western Cape, supervised by Winston Hide.[7][8][9]
