PhD Student

Early Life Aetiology and Mechanisms of Diabetes and Related Metabolic Disorders

Current work and interests

Lena is a PhD student supervised by Professor Ken Ong, Dr John Perry and Dr Felix Day. Her research focuses on understanding the genetics of puberty, especially untangling its relationship with BMI, as well as the link between puberty timing and later life health using large-scale genomic data.

Background and experience

Prior to joining the Unit, Lena completed her undergraduate degree in Human Sciences at UCL, where she first developed an interest in epidemiology while writing her final year dissertation centred around exploring the role of maternal overnutrition and dietary inequality in the development of the metabolic syndrome. She subsequently obtained an MSc in Epidemiology at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, focusing her research project on investigating the association between diet and multimorbidity.