Sónia Gonçalves

Head of Global Operations, Genomic Surveillance Unit

Sónia is Head of Global Operations in the Genomic Surveillance Unit. She oversees the delivery of large-scale genomic surveillance operations on infectious diseases to public health agencies in the UK and globally to partners across Africa, Asia and South America.

About Sónia

Her role is to lead the end to end scientific operations for the generation of covid and malaria genomic surveillance data. The genome variation data is reported to research partners, public health agencies and national malaria control programmes to inform control interventions. She is responsible for the end to end delivery of a national service to UK-HSA for SARS-CoV-2 genomic surveillance, which has generated over 3 million SARS-CoV-2 genome sequences.
Within MalariaGEN’s framework, she is responsible for the delivery of a global operation for the provision of genomic surveillance data on malaria parasites and vectors to partners across the globe. This encompasses centralized large-scale operations through the Institute generating high-quality, curated genomic data for over 20K parasite and vector samples per year. She also leads the delivery of an implementation programme for the decentralisation of sequencing and translation of genomic workflows to increase capacity for genomic surveillance in malaria endemic countries.

Previous work

Sonia Goncalves has a PhD in Plant Biology from Universidade Nova de Lisboa and before joining the Wellcome Sanger Institute held a joint position as the Centro de Biotecnologia Agrícola e Agro-Alimentar do Alentejo (CEBAL) as Head of AgroGenomics Research Group and Chief Executive Officer for the Centre.

My timeline

• Head Global Operations - Genomic Surveillance Unit, Wellcome Sanger Institute, UK

• Head Service Delivery - Genomic Surveillance, Genomic Surveillance Unit, Wellcome Sanger Institute, UK

• Senior Scientific Manager, Wellcome Sanger Institute, UK

• Chief Executive Officer, CEBAL, Portugal

• Principal Investigator, Head of AgroGenomics Group, CEBAL, Portugal

• Post Doctoral Fellow, NOVA University of Lisbon, Portugal

• PhD in Biology, NOVA University of Lisbon, Portugal / Institute Paper Science and Technology, USA/ University Malaga, Spain

• BSc in Plant Biology, Faculty of Sciences of the University of Lisbon