Tejas Shah
Tejas was the first ever person to join the group and the longest member to date (apart from Carl himself). He was employed as a computational biologist. Inventive and enthusiastic, with a strong mathematical background and an interest in methods and problem solving, he left the group in 2016 to focus on his start up, synced.to. We’ve only just tidied up the desk!
Jimmy Liu
Jimmy was the first PhD student to join the group. Jimmy loves a GWAS, and published three such studies in Nature Genetics that together identified >50 new loci for immune mediated diseases. Unfortunately for our 5-a-side football team at the time, he was much better at mapping genes than stopping goals! Jimmy now works as a statistical geneticist at GSK where he helps them use genetics to identify new drug targets.
Eva Gonçalves Serra
Eva joined the group as a PhD student to work on very early onset IBD and congenital hypothyroidism. Lab meetings instantly became more entertaining and engaging as a result. She completed her PhD in 2016 and is now working at Congenica.
Javier Gutierrez-Achury
Javi is originally from Colombia (specifically from Neiva - Huila) and is a mixed-up between Medicine and Human Genetics. He joined the group as a postdoc after he completed his PhD in The Netherlands.
Javi decided to go back home (probably looking for a better weather) and now is working to make the world better for other people. :)
Dan Rice
Dan was a Senior Software Developer who developed our database for patient phenotype data. He also developed many of the pipelines that are routinely used within the group. Dan is now a Javascript developer at EBI, working in the Protein Function Development team led by Maria-Jesus Martin
Julie Matte
Julie joined the lab as an Advanced Research Assistant to undertake some functional follow-up experiments of IBD GWAS hits using CRISPR in macrophages. After two years in the team Julie left the team to join the PhD programme at Sanger. We are still hoping she may one day return to the group!
Velislava Petrova
Veli was a PhD student in the group using sequencing to survey VD(J) responses to measles infection and vaccination. Veli also did a short postdoc in the team and spent some time seconded to the WHO. Veli now works for the World Bank in Geneva.
Kimberly Cheam
Kim was an Advanced Research Assistant in the group contributing to a range of projects including examining the role of functional variants in intestinal organoids. Kim left to pursue a PhD at the University of Cambridge however her secondary supervisor, Leo Parts, is based at Sanger so we hope to still see her around from time-to-time.
Tong Deng
Tong joined the group as an ARA to generate organoids from our gut biopsies. A very talented researcher, Tong has been accepted on a PhD programme at Yale University where she will start in the Autumn - until then she will be working at Colombia as a research assistant.
Vasiliki Lagou
Vasiliki was a postdoc working in the group on Mendelian Randomisation-based approaches for identifying candidate IBD causal genes. She departed the group to move to Brazil with her family where she will continue her scientific career - we wish her the best of luck!
Rebecca McIntyre
Rebecca started out split between our group and Jeff Barrett's. However the A-team won out over the B-team and she spent many years leading the wet lab in our group eventually becoming HumGen's first Principal Staff Scientist! Unfortunately nothing good lasts forever and Rebecca departed our group to take the of lead Experimental Science at the biotech firm Relation Therapeutics.
Jason Skelton
Jason joined the Sanger Centre way back in 1993 at the age of 18 and was one of the 17 original staff! After a series of stints across Sanger, he joined our group to help generate our scRNA-seq data in the wet lab. He has now said farewell to the Sanger Institute and has moved on to CRUK Cambridge - best of luck, Jason!
Jasmin Ostermayer
Jasmin joined the group as an advanced research assistant and contributed to our various single-cell sequencing studies on the gut and blood. After doing a fantastic job she was accepted for a PhD in Paris where she resides currently and we're sure she's excelling.
Menna Ghouraba
Menna was an ARA in the group for 5 years. In that time she was absolutely crucial to all of single-cell wet lab work - developing protocols, running pilots and processing hundreds of samples. On top of that she brought delicious baked goods and constant positivity to the group! We will miss her dearly but we're all thrilled she is getting the chance to pursue her dream as a doctoral student in at the Barts Cancer Institute in London.
Jamie Floyd
Jamie was the first postdoc to join the group, way back in 2009. He led the WTCCC3 PBC GWAS study that identified 12 new risk loci. Jamie left the group not long after Carl spoilt what could have been his greatest sporting achievement by dropping a catch off Jamie’s pedestrian bowling while they were both representing Sanger in a game of cricket. Jamie now works for Genomics plc, in Oxford, using genetics to identify drug targets for complex diseases.
Sun-Gou Ji
Sun-Gou joined the group in 2011 to work on genetic studies of inflammatory bowel disease, primary sclerosing cholangitis and primary biliary cirrhosis for his PhD. He also had a great positive influence on the collective fitness of the group, since he made most of us join him at gym sessions. After a stint at Seven Bridges Genomics in Boston, Sun-Gou is now head of statistical genetics at BridgeBio.
Carmen
Diaz Soria
Carmen was a joint PhD student with our group and Paul Kellam’s, looking at the consequences of variation in the IFITM locus in infectious disease. Carmen not only managed to complete her PhD within the four timeframe but she also gave birth to her beautiful daughter Alma. Carmen is now a postdoctoral fellow with Matt Berriman working on parasite genomics.
Loukas Moutsians
Loukas joined the lab as a postdoc having done his PhD and a postdoc at the University of Oxford, with Gil McVean and Mark McCarthy, respectively. He led several of our IBD GWAS/WGS studies. He was promoted to a senior staff scientist and was a key part of the team (both academically and socially). He is now Head of Bioinformatics Research Services at Genomics England and a Senior Lecturer at QMUL
Olivia Edwards
Olivia came to us for summer placement following the completion of her second year Natural Sciences at the University of Cambridge, with an interest to specialise in genetics. We were all massively impressed with what Olivia was able to achieve during this short time - CRISPR in primary human T cells. We're delighted that Olivia is now undertaking her PhD at the Sanger Institute.
Carla Jones-Bell
Carla joined the group on a Janet Thornton Fellowship. Carla is an immunologist who took time away from science to raise a family and then spent time as secondary school teacher. The JTF allowed her to return to scientific research and she worked on a genome-wide CRISPR screening experiments in primary T-cells. She is now a senior staff scientist in the Trynka Lab at Sanger.
Martin Kelemen
Martin was a former PhD student joint between this group and Chris Wallace's. The focus of his PhD was the use of polygenic risk scores and modelling non-linear genetic effects. Martin now works as a statistical geneticist at the University of Cambridge.
Leland Taylor
Leland was a postdoc in the group working on the computational side of our single-cell RNA-seq project. He led the development of our in-house single-cell pipeline then applied it to great effect to QC, curate and analyse our gut data. Leland has gone back to the USA to work with Francis Collins on T2D.
Sigurgeir Olafsson
Sigurgeir was a PhD student joint between the Anderson group and Campbell group at Sanger. After 3.5 years of laser capture microscopy to identify somatic mutations in immune-mediated diseases, he has departed the group and the UK to return to Iceland where there is apparently much better food and a new role for him at deCODE genetics.
Ewan Harrison
Prior to the pandemic, Ewan was a fellow attached to the Anderson group working on S. Aureus. However during the pandemic he took a secondment to help lead the UK SARS-CoV2 sequencing efforts. He has left us but stayed at Sanger to become the head of the respiratory virus and microbiome initiative as a group leader.
Nikos Panousis
Nikos joined the group from the Gaffney group at Sanger bringing with him a wealth of genetics experience and the MacroMap project. Nikos continued to work on MacroMap closely working with Omar to jointly find eQTLs and sQTLs in stimulated macrophages. Nikos joined GlaxoSmithKline which isn't too far away, so we hope to still see him around!
Aleksejs Sazonovs
Alex was a PhD student then postdoc in the group. Whilst in the group he worked closely with clinical collaborators on the genetics of drug response as well as association of IBD to rare variation in WES and WGS data. Alex departed the group to take up an assistant professor role in Copenhagen, Denmark with PREDICT-IBD. His expertise and great sense of humour will go down a treat there, we're sure - held og lykke!
