Dr. Jennifer Harris is a Senior Researcher at the Norwegian Institute of Public Health in Oslo Norway where she leads the program in genetic epidemiology. She has interdisciplinary training in life-span development, genetics, behavior and epidemiology. Since 2000 she has also been a consultant at the NIH, to the National Institute on Aging, Division of Behavioral and Social Research where she advises on the development of research agendas that integrate genetics/genomics with a broad behavioral and social science portfolio. Dr. Harris has been highly active in several international projects on the harmonization of large-scale biobanks in epidemiology. She led the European Union project Promoting Harmonization of Epidemiological Biobanks in Europe (PHOEBE) and leads the Norwegian research participation in the European Network of Genetic and Genomic Epidemiology (ENGAGE), and in Biobank Standardisation and Harmonisation for Research Excellence in the European Union (BioSHaRE-EU). She was also a partner in the Genome-wide Analyses of European Twin Cohorts to Identify Genes in Common Diseases (GenomEUtwin) and now leads the ethics core in the Biobank Norway infrastructure project.
Dr. Harris founded the population-based twin panel study at the Norwegian Institute of Public Health under her interests to integrate developmental approaches with genetic research into complex phenotypes. She developed the data as a national research resource that have become an integral part of the National Twin Register. Her current twin research uses the discordant twin design to study epigenetic influences on autoimmune disorders. She is also studying genetic and environmental influences on sex-differences in body composition and is working in Nordic-wide twin study collaboration on cancer (NorTwinCan). She has broad commitment to the wider scientific community and serves on several expert panels, boards, steering groups, scientific advisory committees and editorial boards.