MRC Human Genetics Unit
Medical Research Council Human Genetics Unit

Welcome to our 2024 Cross-disciplinary fellows

Maria Delgado Ortet, Rodrigo García-Tejera, Svitlana Braichenko and Luciana Luque join the institute: April 2024

XDF Fellows
Left to right: Maria Delgado Ortet, Rodrigo García-Tejera, Svitlana Braichenko and Luciana Luque

The Cross-Disciplinary Fellowships (XDF) Programme is a 4-year training scheme for early-career quantitatively trained scientists. Fellows follow a personalized training to become cross-disciplinary leaders in quantitative biomedicine.

This year, we are delighted to welcome four fellows to the programme and the institute.  

Luciana is a physicist with a PhD from Universidad Nacional de La Plata and expertise in computational biology and biophysics. 

Maria joins the programme with a PhD in Engineering and Radiology from the University of Cambridge with expertise in medical image analysis. 

Rodrigo holds a PhD in Regenerative medicine from the University of Edinburgh with a Physics background and expertise in stochastic modelling and stem cell biology.  

Svitlana has a PhD in Computational Biology from University of Southampton with expertise in Bayesian inference and machine learning. 

The XDF programme is primarily funded by the Medical Research Council, although Luciana’s post is funded by Cancer Research UK. This provides an excellent opportunity to establish new collaborations in quantitative cancer research between Glasgow and Edinburgh.

We extend a warm welcome to the four new Cross-disciplinary Fellows who have come from all over the world and from different academic backgrounds to take on major challenges facing modern data-rich biomedicine. The 4 new XDFs will greatly enhance the quantitative skill set of the Institute of Genetics and Cancer, and the CRUK Scotland Institute. 

Professor Chris Ponting (MRC Human Genetics Unit) Programme Lead

The programme which was launched in 2018 has trained 10 fellows from different quantitative background who have now taken up leading positions in academia and industry.  

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