Naomi R. Wray

Naomi Ruth Wray is an Australian statistical geneticist at the University of Queensland, where she is a Professorial Research Fellow at the Institute for Molecular Bioscience and an Affiliate Professor in the Queensland Brain Institute. She is also a National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) Principal Research Fellow and, along with Peter Visscher and Jian Yang, is one of the three executive team members of the NHMRC-funded Program in Complex Trait Genomics. She is also the Michael Davys Chair of Psychiatric Genetics at Oxford University. Naomi pioneered the use of polygenic scores in human genetics, and has made significant contributions to both the development of methods and their clinical use.

Education and career Wray has a B.Sc. in Agricultural Science from the University of Edinburgh (1984), and an M.S. in livestock genetics and statistics from Cornell University in 1986. She earned her Ph.D. in 1989 from the University of Edinburgh where she worked on population genetics. Her first academic career was in livestock genetics, before she transitioned her research to human genetics following the development of technology that allowed the direct study of DNA variation at scale. Now, she primarily focusses on disorders of the brain, addressing the fundamental questions about why only certain people get common diseases, and why only certain people respond to treatment.

Her research primarily focuses on the development and application of quantitative genetics and genomics methodologies across complex diseases, disorders and traits, specifically psychiatric-related traits.

Wray was one of the scientists who helped discover three new genes that increase the risk of sporadically developing motor neuron disease (MND), funding for which was raised through videos of "the ice bucket challenge" in 2014. She stated that researchers are "very hopeful that in the next phase of discovery, as sample sizes with measured DNA increase, that we'll discover more genes associated with MND". and a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Health and Medical Sciences as of 2020. Awards include the Australian Neuroscience Society Nina Kondelos Award 2016 (awarded to female neuroscientists for outstanding contributions to basic or clinical neuroscience research), She is also a Clarivate Highly Cited researcher.