Leena Peltonen-Palotie, the head human genetics at the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute, died last week, the institute says. She was 57. Peltonen-Palotie studied population genetics and her group found mutations associated with schizophrenia, obesity, heart diseases among other disease. During her career, she also established a genetic research center at the University of California, Los Angeles, and was a member of the Scientific Council of the European Research Council.