Biography:
I graduated with a BA (Hons) in Natural Sciences from the University of Cambridge in 2018. During my final year, I specialised in Genetics and completed a project in Dr. Liria Masuda-Nakagawa’s lab, focusing on the circuitry of odour discrimination for learning in Drosophila melanogaster. Following University, I worked as a Scientific Publishing Editor for the Royal Society of Chemistry, before joining Dr. Andrew McKenzie’s lab at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology as a Research Assistant. During my time in the McKenzie lab, I contributed to a study investigating the role of RORα in the lymphocyte development and differentiation circuit. I joined Dr. Mathew Van de Pette’s lab at the MRC Toxicology Unit as a PhD student in 2020.
Research Interests:
My PhD project focuses on investigating the impact of drug exposures during pregnancy on the developing epigenome and tracking the longitudinal nature of responses, with a particular focus on genomic imprinting. Genomic imprinting is an epigenetic phenomenon found in eutherian and metatherian mammals, resulting in parent-of-origin specific allelic expression. During development, imprinted genes have been reported to play roles in regulating placental development, fetal growth and resource allocation between the mother and the foetus. My research involves developing and utilising novel mouse reporter lines to identify potential “windows of opportunity” during development in which imprinted regions are particularly sensitive to pharmacological exposures.
