Leadership Team

Dr. Andrew Fry
Director

Andrew is a Clinical Geneticist with a research interest in childhood neurodevelopmental disorders. He has been Director of Wales Gene Park since 2020. Andrew leads Wales Gene Park teams in deploying developments in genetics and genomics to aid research and the improve the lives of patients in Wales and beyond.

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Angela Burgess
Co-Director, Education and Engagement

Angela has led the education and engagement activity within Wales Gene Park since its inception in 2002. With a background in science education, Angela and her team work to share knowledge of genetics and genomics as widely as possible and engage with and involve patients to inform and influence genomic research.

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Education and Engagement Team

Angela Burgess
Co-Director Education and Engagement

Angela has led the education and engagement activity within Wales Gene Park since its inception in 2002. With a background in science education, Angela and her team work to share knowledge of genetics and genomics as widely as possible and engage with and involve patients to inform and influence genomic research.

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Dr. Rhian Morgan
Senior Education and Engagement Officer

Rhian’s background is in biomedical research and she has worked in academic, industrial, and clinical settings. Additionally, she has worked with individuals and families affected by genetic conditions. She is the Education and Engagement Officer for Wales Gene Park where she helps deliver a busy and varied programme of genetics and genomics-related activities to the public, schools and colleges, health professionals, and patients and families.

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Emma Hughes
Policy and Engagement Manager for Wales

Emma also leads patient and public involvement in research for Wales Gene Park as well as being the Policy and Engagement Manager for Genetic Alliance UK's work in Wales. Emma's work includes policy, public affairs, communications, and organising events to generate and communicate a patient and family viewpoint on policy and practice relating to the development of genetics and genomics in healthcare in Wales.

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Nina Lazarou
Education Assistant

Nina provides administrative assistance for the Education and Engagement programme. 

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Genomics for Research Teams

Genomics Facility

Shelley Rundle
Genomics Facility Manager

Shelley offers the Genomics Facility Team 30 years of laboratory expertise, from the linkage of ricin A-chains with antibodies for targeted tumour therapy to her current role supporting the preparation of Next Generation Sequencing libraries. She is part of a team that strive to provide personalised support to our researchers in Wales.

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Dr. Vikki Humphreys
Research Technician

Vikki has over 22 years laboratory experience working within Microbial and Molecular biology fields. Having worked for the Wales Gene Park for 16 years, Vikki has been involved in all the changes and developments that have occurred in NGS platforms and laboratory based procedures over the years.

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Dr Giulia Trauzzi
Research Technician

Giulia has a background in population genetics/genomics. She has experience in DNA extraction and amplification (including ancient DNA) and diverse set of molecular markers. Her bioinformatic skills include QC of genomic data, variant calling, population and seascape genomics analyses and competency in coding languages (R/Rstudio, Unix/Linux - Cluster computing). She joined the Wales Gene Park in 2023 where her duties include library preparations, Illumina sequencing and QC of NGS data.     

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Bioinformatics Team

Dr. Iain Perry
Senior Bioinformatician

Iain's background includes a wide variety of research topics including genomics and transcriptomics of high altitude adaption, E-DNA analysis of water samples from Africa to the Arctic circle for Invertebrate, Fish, Algae and Bacteria. Working within the bioinformatics team Iain is keen on novel analysis approaches and the development and delivery of training in bioinformatics.

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Dr. Benoit Lan-Leung
Senior Bioinformatician

Ben has led genomic, transcriptomic and methylomic research on wide variety of topics, including imprinting disorders and Alzheimer's disease. Although specialised in bioinformatics, Ben has spent several years doing wet lab experiments, which facilitate the understand  of the ins and outs of research projects. Leading the bioinformatic team at Wales Gene Park, Ben is also keen on novel analysis approaches, shallow machine learning and development of pipeline workflow using Nextflow.

Aimee Bettridge
Bioinformatician

Aimee's background encompasses clinical molecular microbiology, environmental bacteriology and mycology, in addition to plant biology of agricultural significance. Of importance, Aimee has tested and developed Illumina 16S rRNA gene sequencing and community fingerprinting for the routine screening of lung bacterial microbiota. She has also employed Illumina whole genome sequencing to better-characterise Achromobacter species through phylogenomics, pangenome analysis, SNP analysis, antimicrobial resistance and its virulence. In contrast, Aimee has exploited genome mining to determine the biosynthetic potential of both non-pathogenic and pathogenic bacteria. Aimee is also familiar with the analysis of transcriptomic data and qPCR data through studying climatic effects on forage grass gene expression. Aimee's key duties at WGP involves QC of sequence data in addition to bespoke analysis of NGS data.

Genomics Integration into SAIL

Prof. Kerina Jones
Professor of Population Data Science at Swansea University

Kerina is Wales Gene Park lead for genomic integration into SAIL databank. Through her role as the Associate Director for Information Governance and Public Engagement (IG&PE), Kerina works to ensure data protection and to maximise socially-acceptable data utility across the various population data Science initiatives, including: the SAIL Databank, Administrative Data Research Centre Wales, and the HDRUK collaboration.

Genomic Editing Facility

  • Prof. Nick Allen
    Genome Editing Lead
  • Bridget Allen
    Genome Editing Research Manager

 

The Wales Cancer TRE project

  • Dr. Kevin Ashelford
    Data Strategy and IT Infrastructure Lead (GPW funded)
  • Dr. Peter Giles
    Data Scientists (Cancer TRE project funded)
  • Liz Merrifield
    Information Governance Officer (Cancer TRE project funded)

 

Genomic Consent in Wales

  • Rhys Vaughan
    Genomic consent Manager (GPW funded)

 

Research Ethics and Project Support

  • Laura Butlin
    Research Coordinator

 

 

Executive Management Team

An executive management team formed of the key leads for activity within Wales Gene Park along with University academics meet regularly to guide the operational direction of Wales Gene Park and to discuss and progress our strategy to support genomics in Wales. This team is support by an external advisory committee who review our activity and provide long term strategic advice and guidance.

Wales Gene Park

  • Dr. Andrew Fry
    Director
  • Angela Burgess
    Co-Director and Education and Engagement Manager
  • Emma Hughes
    Public Involvement Lead
  • Dr. Kevin Ashelford
    Data Strategy and IT Infrastructure Lead

Academic Leads

  • Prof. Kerina Jones (Swansea University)
    SAIL Data Integration Lead
  • Dr. Hywel Williams
    Impact Lead
  • Prof. Andy Tee
    Commercial Lead
  • Prof. Nick Allen
    Genome Editing Lead