Nancy J. Cox, PhD, is Professor of Medicine in the Division of Genetic Medicine and Clinical Pharmacology, Department of Medicine, and holds the Mary Phillips Edmonds Gray Professorship at at Vanderbilt University Medical Center (VUMC). She is the founding director of the Vanderbilt Genetics Institute and former director of the Division of Genetic Medicine.
She earned a BS in Biology at the University of Notre Dame, a PhD in Human Genetics from Yale University, and did postdoctoral research at Washington University (1982-85) and the University of Pennsylvania (1985-87) before joining the University of Chicago, where she spent her academic faculty career before joining VUMC in 2015.
Dr. Cox has an active and long-standing research program in integrating genome variation with genome function to understand the genetic basis of human diseases and related traits. She has funded research in methods for expanding polygenic risk scores as well as in genetic studies of a variety of human diseases.
Dr. Cox has more than 425 peer-reviewed publications and is a fellow of AAAS. She was a co-winner of the 2008 American Association of Cancer Research Landon Award, and won the 2010 Leadership Award for the International Society of Genetic Epidemiology. She served as Editor-in-Chief of Genetic Epidemiology, and has served two terms on the Board of Directors for the American Society of Human Genetics, including as President of ASHG in 2017. At Vanderbilt, she has won the Richard Caprioli Award and the Mary Jane Werthen Award.