GENE GENIUS

About the Author

Sue Williams is an award-winning journalist and author who has written in a variety of genres. Her last book was the best-selling Women of the Outback: Inspiring True Stories of Tragedy and Triumph. Others include Peter Ryan: The Inside Story; Mean Streets, Kind Heart: The Father Chris Riley Story; and And Then the Darkness, about the disappearance of the British backpacker Peter Falconio for ABC Books, which was shortlisted for the prestigious Golden Dagger Award in the UK for the international True Crime Book of the Year, and shortlisted for the Ned Kelly Awards in Australia. Dr Margaret Smith is a molecular geneticist with over 20 years' experience in neurogenetics and cancer genetics. A brilliant scientist, she has worked in major teaching hospitals in both Australia and New Zealand. Margaret has helped develop methods to enable cost-effective breast cancer screening in diagnostic laboratories in Australia, New Zealand and Canada. She is recognised locally for her contribution to genetics with her appointments to the Human Variome Project, as scientific associate of the Genomic Disorders Research Centre, and as associate investigator for the NH&MRC grant application for funding to provide a database for collection of sequence variation. Since 2000, she's been a member of the Victorian Cooperative Oncology Group (Cancer Genetics Advisory Committee). Recently, Margaret became the co-founder of a nutritional genomics company called SmartDNA.