Senior Research Associate

Early Life Aetiology and Mechanisms of Diabetes and Related Metabolic Disorders

Current work and interests

Katherine joined the Unit in March 2021 as an MRC Postdoctoral Fellow under the supervision of Dr John Perry in the Early Life Aetiology and Mechanisms of Diabetes and Related Metabolic Disorders programme. Her research aims to identify and characterise genetic mechanisms that drive growth and body composition and their relation to metabolic disease susceptibility, using population-level data. She became a Senior Research Associate in 2024.

Background and experience

Prior to joining the unit, Katherine completed her PhD in 2020 at the University of Edinburgh. During her PhD, she worked with UK Biobank data, combining genetic and imaging datasets, to identify genomic regions that associate with disease risk-conferring body composition patterns. She then worked on establishing their functional effects on metabolic health and disease, using in vivo models. She holds a BSc (Hons) in Biology from Newcastle University and an MSc in Human Molecular Genetics from Imperial College London.

Publications

• MRC Epidemiology Unit publications on the Publications Database
• Profile on Google scholar.