Students

Students in the ruminant functional genomics lab past and present

Ms Charity Muriuki - Newton Fund Kenya PhD Student

Ms Muriuki came to the Roslin Institute in 2015. She originally joined Professor David Hume's research group where she began her PhD project building a 'mini-atlas' of gene expression for goats. She is now co-supervised by Dr Emily Clark and Professor Hume in the final stages of writing up her thesis. Ms Muriuki joined us from ILRI in Nairobi, Kenya, where she was working as a research assistant studying East Coast Fever in cattle. Through her PhD studies she has developed her molecular biology skills as well as learning to analyse large gene expression datasets. One of her main focuses was to understand the transcriptional control of innate immunity in goats.

Dr Mary McCulloch (alumni)

Dr McCulloch completed her PhD working on the sheep gene expression atlas dataset in 2018. She generated the time course of bone marrow-derived macrophages stimulated with lipopolysaccharide (LPS) to mimic infection by gram-negative bacteria. Analysing this dataset, using bioinformatics, was the main focus of her PhD. She was supervised by Professor David Hume, Professor Kim Summers and Dr James Prendergast. Dr McCulloch's expertise as a vet and knowledge of anatomy were also very important in delivering the sheep gene expression atlas and she was a key member of the team. She is currently analysing allele-specific expression in the LPS time course data. 

Katie Dubarry - CASE studentship funded by BBSRC (EASTBIO DTP - Roslin Technologies)

Ms Dubarry joined us in 2020 after completing her undergraduate studies in Agriculture at SRUC, a step-change from her first career as a beauty therapist. Her project focuses on immune gene expression in sheep, using molecular and bioinformatics techniques. For this, she will generate and analyse RNA data sets from whole blood and immune cell-type populations. Ms Dubarry's ambition is to work on projects that translate into impactful improvements in animal health, for the benefit of farmers and the animals in their care. Outside the lab, she is an expert in representation and improving the student experience. She is currently an EASTBIO rep for Edinburgh, as well as sitting on NUS Scotland’s Steering Committee, BSAS Early Career Council, and occasionally inputting into work across the HE sector. She is supervised by Dr Emily Clark (Roslin) and Professor Mike Coffey (SRUC). Her project is a CASE studentship funded by BBSRC through the EASTBIO DTP, in association with Roslin Technologies.