MRC Epidemiology UnitHead of Research Operations
Left the Unit in 2025
Work and interests
Louise Aigrain joined the Unit in March 2022 as Head of Research Operations and was responsible for the Department’s research operations and research governance. She led five specialist research support teams, which carry out data management, study coordination, field epidemiology, information technology and laboratory work, including the BioRepository laboratory within Addenbrooke’s Hospital, Cambridge.
Background and experience
Louise obtained a PhD in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at the Université Paris-Saclay in 2010, and then transitioned to Biophysics as a Postdoctoral Research Assistant within the Gene Machines Group in the University of Oxford studying the dynamics of DNA repair proteins.
In 2014, she joined the DNA Pipeline R&D team of the Wellcome Sanger Institute where she led the R&D phase of bespoke and large Next Generation Sequencing projects such as the sequencing of the UK Biobank cohort, and contributed to the COG-UK Consortium to deliver large-scale SARS-CoV-2 genome sequencing capacity.