One of the many illustrious speakers at the Precision Medicine World Conference 2027 (PMWC 2027) (January 27-29, in Santa Clara, California) will be Mary-Claire King, PhD, a pioneering human geneticist best known for proving that breast and ovarian cancer can be inherited. She is Professor of Genome Sciences and of Medical Genetics, U. of Washington School of Medicine. Dr. King will be recognized with a PMWC Pioneer Award for her outstanding work over many years. The PMWC Pioneer Awards are given to venerable individuals whose foresight and ground-breaking contributions to precision medicine propelled the movement in earlier years, allowing it to gain momentum to evolve into the standard of care that it is becoming today. In 1990, Dr. King and her team mapped the locus for the BRCA1 gene to chromosome 17. The finding came after roughly 17 years of research against prevailing scientific opinion. [The exact BRCA1 gene was fully cloned and identified by Mark Skolnick’s group at Myriad Genetics in 1994.] BRCA1 identification transformed cancer diagnosis, risk assessment, drug development, and prevention The mutated BRCA1 gene is responsible for a significant proportion of inherited breast and ovarian cancer cases. Earlier, Dr. King’s doctoral work demonstrated through comparative protein analysis that chimpanzees and humans are 99 percent genetically identical. She also pioneered the use of DNA sequencing for human rights investigations, applying it to identify kidnapped children in Argentina and cases of human rights violations on six continents. Her current work spans inherited breast, ovarian, and prostate cancer; schizophrenia; and severe inherited disorders in children. She is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and the National Academy of Medicine.