Norma J. Nowak

In her role as the CSO of Empire Genomics, Norma guides the scientific direction of the company and ensures we continually bring the best innovative technologies to the genetic community. She leverages her experience and professional networks to facilitate collaborative research efforts with the leading scientific institutions and global research community.

A leader in the field of genomics, Norma's research contributed directly to the Human Genome Project and microarray-based approaches to understanding heritable disorders and cancer. She is the Director of Science and Technology for the New York State Center of Excellence in Bioinformatics & Life Sciences. Among her major achievements, Norma has authored landmark papers describing the cloning of several heritable cancer disorders, including a form of Ataxia Telangiectasia (Nijmegen Breakage Syndrome). Her work on the Human Genome Project was published in the genome issue of Nature. She led and coordinated the three groups for the NCI extramural Cancer Chromosome Aberration Project. As part of this project, she developed BAC- based array CGH (Comparative Genomic Hybridization) a microarray-based method for identifying numerical differences in DNA between tumor and normal cells and cells from individuals with genetic disorders. The results of this work were published in Nature Genetics.

Dr. Nowak, who has received more than $4 million in research grants from the National Institutes of Health and various foundations, has authored or co-authored 90 research articles in leading scientific journals and has served as an associate editor of Physiological Genomics. She recently joined the editorial board of Cytogenetics and Genome Research as an Associate Editor.

Norma holds a Bachelors of Science degree in Biology from Canisius College and MS and PhD from the State University of New York at Buffalo and has completed post-graduate research in Cancer Genetics at the Roswell Park Cancer Institute.