Profile

I’m originally from Scotland but I grew up in Lancashire, moved to Exeter for university and loved it so much that I decided to stay. During the lockdown, I’m staying with my parents so that I have some company, and so that I get to spend some time with their dogs! When I’m not busy with science, I enjoy watching and playing rugby, and playing video games (Animal Crossing is keeping me busy at the minute).

My work focusses on two diseases that affect blood sugar levels in babies, hyperinsulinism and neonatal diabetes. These diseases can make people really sick throughout their life, so it’s important to work out why they have this disease so that doctors can look after them in the best way. I look at the genetic code of our body, DNA, to identify changes that cause these two diseases. These changes can be in the code itself, or in how our bodies stores and uses that code.

I work with a fantastic team of people who are all focussed on discovering the causes of rare diseases, and what happens in my day depends on what interesting thing we’ve looked at the day before! Sometimes I’m in the lab with tubes of DNA from patients doing various tests, and other times I’m writing and using computer programs to look at my results from tests in the lab.