CGEM welcomes new PhD students
6 new PhD students began their studies with supervisors from CGEM
The PhD students who joined CGEM in September 2022 are: Tamsin Baxter, Eleanor Stamp, Kevin Carr, Hannah Smith, Scott Pirrie, and Elizabeth Orhadje.
Tamsin Baxter has begun a Medical Research Scotland funded PhD under the supervision of Professor Cathy Abbott.
My PhD is looking at drug repurposing to treat a rare childhood neurological disease caused by mutations in the eEF1A2 protein, to do this I will use cell culture, mouse models and high-throughput screening to identify FDA-approved drugs that can alter the regulation of the wildtype and mutant forms of this protein.
Tamsin Baxter
Eleanor Stamp and Kevin Carr have both begun their PhD studies in Dr Kathy Evans’ group (funded by East Bio, and Wellcome Trust Translational Neuroscience studentships respectively).
Hi, I’m Eleanor! I will be working in the Evans Group and will be combining neuroscience and genetics to investigate the underlying mechanisms of DNA damage and age-related cognitive decline. Specifically, I will be exploring the role of the SORCS2 gene in double-stranded DNA break formation using in vitro neuronal cultures and aim to create a machine learning model to classify cellular phenotypes in a high-throughput manner.
Eleanor Stamp
I will be using multi-omics approaches to identify candidate biomarkers of stress and to understand mechanisms by which stress accelerates biological ageing.
Kevin Carr
Hannah Smith begins a Wellcome Trust Translational Neuroscience studentship with Professor Riccardo Marioni. Scott Pirrie also begins a PhD on the Biomedical AI program, supervised by Professor Marioni in collaboration with Optima.
My PhD project will involve using statistical techniques to combine several risk factors, epigenetic and proteomic data to try to find biomarkers of brain health that will help to identify individuals at risk of neurological disorders and cognitive decline.
Hannah Smith
Finally, Elizabeth Orhadje has begun a PhD, funded by The Kennedy Trust and supervised by Professor Stuart Ralston.
"I will be working on identifying how patients present with pregnancy-associated osteoporosis, what risk factors they have for the disease, how they are treated and what impact the condition has on their quality of life." Elizabeth Orhadje