Georgia Dunston

Georgia Mae Dunston, Ph.D., is an African American geneticist who is most notably known for her role as the founder of the Whole Genome Science Foundation and for founding the National Human Genome Center at Howard University, where she taught immunogenetics. The Whole Genome Science Foundation was a nonprofit organization that Dunston founded that aimed to enhance understanding of the biological, technological innovation, and mathematical components involved in studying the human genome. She earned a BS in Biology at the Norfolk State University, obtained a Master’s Degree at Tuskegee University, and went on to become the first Black recipient of a PhD in Human Genetics at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor. Having been born in 1944 in a segregated Norfolk, Virginia, Dunston’s lived experiences enduring the struggles as both a woman of color, and a woman of color in the field of medicine, motivated her to use her scientific knowledge to promote equitable research that would benefit the Black community. One of Georgia Dunston’s major contributions was that she worked to create a genetic reference material for African Americans to account for disparities in diseases that disproportionately affected Black individuals, since most medical research was catered toward White individuals.


-Marleigh