Jenny Graves is Distinguished Professor at La Trobe University in Melbourne, Australia. She works on Australian animals; kangaroos and platypus, devils (Tasmanian) and dragons (lizards). She uses genome comparisons to explore the origin, function and fate of human sex genes and chromosomes, (in)famously predicting the disappearance of the human Y chromosome and the extinction – or speciation – of humans. Her early discoveries that transcriptional repression is the basis of X chromosome inactivation, and that DNA methylation is involved, inspire her recent work on the molecular basis of environmental sex determination.
Jenny has produced four books and more than 400 research articles, and also writes science articles and columns – on sex, evolution, and women in science – for the public. She has been honoured by the Academy’s Macfarlane Burnet medal and is an Officer in the Order of Australia. She is a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Science and the US National Academy of Science, 2006 L’Oreal-UNESCO Laureate for Women in Science, and she won the 2017 Australian Prime Minister’s Prize for Science (the first woman to win solo).