Yassmine Akkari, PhD is a Senior Director in the Institute of Genomic Medicine at Nationwide Children’s Hospital. Born and raised in Lebanon, she earned her Bachelor of Sciences degree in Biology from the American University of Beirut and a PhD in Molecular Genetics at The Ohio State University. Following postdoctoral work on Fanconi anemia and liver gene therapy at the Oregon Health & Sciences University (OHSU), she successfully completed OHSU’s fellowship program in Clinical Cytogenetics, Ph.D. Medical Genetics, and clinical Molecular Genetics. As part of her responsibilities, she and her team of directors and cytogenetic and molecular technologists oversee clinical genetic testing including conventional cytogenetics, chromosomal microarray analysis and FISH on all specimen types, as well as somatic and constitutional next-generation sequencing.
She has served as the President of the Cancer Genomics Consortium, the Vice Chair of the CAP/ACMG Cytogenetics resource Committee, and the Chair of the AMP Training and Education Committee. Currently, she is an Expert member of the WHO Blue Books for hematopoietic and lymphoid tissues and genetic tumor syndromes, the Chair-elect of AMP’s Program Committee, and is a member of the Children’s Oncology Group Cytogenetics Committee. She has published more than thirty-five peer-reviewed articles and two book chapters.