Sarah Tishkoff is the David and Lyn Silfen University Professor in Genetics and Biology at the University of Pennsylvania, holding appointments in the Perelman School of Medicine and the School of Arts and Sciences. She is also the Founding Director of the Penn Center for Global Genomics in the Perelman School of Medicine.

Dr. Tishkoff studies genomic and phenotypic variation in ethnically diverse Africans. Her research combines field work, laboratory research, and computational methods to examine African population history, the genetic basis of anthropometric, cardiovascular, metabolic, and immune related traits, and how humans have adapted to diverse environments and diets. She plays an active role as an advocate for the inclusion of global populations in human genetics and genomics research.

Dr. Tishkoff is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Medicine and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. She is a recipient of an NIH Pioneer Award, a David and Lucile Packard Career Award, a Burroughs/Wellcome Fund Career Award, the ASHG Curt Stern Award, the Wilbur Cross medal from Yale, the Vanderbilt Prize in biomedical sciences and a Penn Integrates Knowledge (PIK) endowed chair. She is past President of the American Society of Human Genetics, is on the Scientific Advisory Board for the Packard Fellowships in Science and Engineering, and is on the editorial boards at Cell and PLOS Genetics.

Her research is supported by grants from the National Institutes of Health, the Chan Zuckerberg Institute, and the American Diabetes Association.

A postdoctoral researcher at the University of Pennsylvania and also serves as Global Impact Coordinator for the Penn Center for Global Genomics. She is a genetic epidemiologist and computational biologist whose work focuses on the genetic architecture of cardiovascular and cardiometabolic diseases — particularly in African and other underrepresented populations. Dr. Machipisa integrates large-scale genomics, proteomics, metabolomics, and multi-omics data with population health approaches to study disease risk, resilience, and health disparities. Dr. Machipisa is also receiving further training in evolutionary and population genetics, as well as functional genomics, through the Genentech-funded PennGGHE Postdoctoral Fellowship.