MRC Epidemiology UnitPhD Student
Early Life Aetiology and Mechanisms of Diabetes and Related Metabolic Disorders
Left the Unit in 2022
Current work and interests
Stasa Stankovic was a PhD student supervised by Dr John Perry, Professor Ken Ong and Dr Hana Lango Allen. She left the Unit in October 2022.
Her research is focused on understanding the genetic architecture behind growth and development phenotypes, such as reproductive ageing, and biological mechanisms, including DNA damage response, which link these early life traits to later life cardio-metabolic health outcomes. This is achieved using genetic approaches in large-scale population studies, including application of high-throughput sequence data, supported by further functional insights using complementary approaches in animal and cellular models through collaborations.
Background and experience
Prior to joining the Unit, Stasa obtained a bachelor’s degree in Biomedical Sciences and master’s degree in Medical Sciences from the University of Cambridge. During her MPhil at the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute, Stasa studied DNA damage response mechanism and its role in haematopoiesis, and gained research experience at the Department of Physiology, Development and Neuroscience studying embryogenesis, foetal development and long term programming of disease.
She also explored the relevance of rare genetic variation to human traits as part of Congenica, genomic medicine company that analyses and interprets genomic data of patients with rare diseases and cancer, and was involved in the development of “Congenica Neuro”, new generation product for the analysis of cases with neurodevelopmental diseases.