Vanessa M. Hayes, PhD, Recognized With 2026 AACR Distinguished Lectureship on the Science of Cancer Health Disparities
ATLANTA – The American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) will award Vanessa M. Hayes, PhD, with the 2026 AACR Distinguished Lectureship on the Science of Cancer Health Disparities during the 19th AACR Conference on The Science of Cancer Health Disparities, to be held in Atlanta from October 18-21.
This special AACR award recognizes investigators whose novel and significant work has had or may have a far-reaching impact on the etiology, detection, diagnosis, treatment, or prevention of cancer health disparities.
Hayes is the Petre Chair of Prostate Cancer Research and head of the Ancestry and Health Genomics Laboratory at the Charles Perkins Centre at the University of Sydney. She is being honored for her groundbreaking contributions to decoding human genomic diversity and its role in health disparities, with a focus on prostate cancer.
Hayes is a world-renowned scientist whose research has resulted in the characterization of genomic and environmental contributors to prostate cancer disparities. Recognizing the significant disparity in health outcomes faced by men who are either from Africa or have African ancestry, she established the Southern African Prostate Cancer Study (SAPCS) almost two decades ago, with the goal to unravel the factors contributing to these disparities. In 2010, she published the first complete African human genome, thereby ensuring the inclusion of African populations in the genomics era and demonstrating the largest collection of genomic variations in such populations at the time. She later published a collection of additional prostate cancer genomes from African patients, the largest such collection to date, and subsequently compared these genomes to those from patients with European ancestry. This groundbreaking research has revealed several genomic features unique to prostate cancer in African populations and continues to provide key insights that are having enormous impacts on the advancement of precision medicine for African men with prostate cancer.
Hayes continues to expand such analyses to populations across Sub-Saharan Africa and globally, with a focus on underrepresented populations most impacted by disease adversity, providing much-needed global insights into prostate cancer risk profiling, tumor molecular taxonomy and actionable targets, as well as associated nongenetic biological and environmental impacts. Hayes now serves as principal investigator and director of one of only two U.S. Department of Defense-funded Health Equity Research Outcomes and Improvement Consortium (HEROIC) Award teams, aimed at understanding the genetic and nongenetic drivers associated with aggressive prostate cancer for men of African ancestry. Through her leadership, the team has established the largest African-inclusive prostate cancer resource available worldwide.
Hayes has received numerous awards and honors throughout her career, including the Prostate Cancer Foundation Challenge Award (2023), the Rotary District 9685 Vocational Excellence Award (2022), The Genetics Society of AustralAsia MJD White Medal (2020), the University of Sydney Vice-Chancellor’s Award for Outstanding Research (2020), the Global Altmetric Top 100 recognition (2019), the African Australian National Award (2013), the inaugural Australian Academy of Science Ruth Stephens Gani Medal for Human Genetics (2008), the Cancer Institute of New South Wales Premier’s Award for Outstanding Cancer Research Fellow (2007), and the Australian Institute of Policy and Science Young Tall Poppy Science Award (2007).
She was elected a fellow of The Australian Academy of Health and Medical Sciences in 2024, received an honorary lifetime membership from the Genetics Society of AustralAsia in 2022, and holds Honorary Professorships at the University of Pretoria in South Africa since 2014, the University of Manchester in the United Kingdom since 2022, the University of East Anglia in the United Kingdom since 2025, and the University of Zambia since 2026.
Hayes earned her undergraduate and master’s degrees from the University of Stellenbosch and Stellenbosch Tygerberg Medical School in South Africa before completing a doctoral degree at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands in 1999. She will present her award lecture during the conference’s Opening Session, which begins at 3:30 p.m. ET on Sunday, October 18.
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