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.
Dr. Karen Reed
Co-Director, Genomics for Research
Karen leads the research teams within Wales Gene Park who strive to make genomic technologies and expertise available to researchers across Wales. Her research interests encompass the use of pre-clinical models of disease to explore the critical molecular events which contribute to the initiation and progression of tumourigenesis (primarily within the intestine and liver).
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.
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.
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.
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.
Rhys Vaughan
Project Officer
Rhys is a trained Genetic Counsellor who played a key part in recruiting patients into the 100,000 Genomes Project in both London and Wales. Rhys' work centres on developing the Genomics Partnership Wales’ Genomics Showcase communicating and educating patients, professionals and the public about advances in genomics and their implication to healthcare.
Nina Lazarou
Education Assistant
Nina provides administrative assistance for the Education and Engagement programme.
Genomics for Research Teams
Genomics Facility
Dr. Karen Reed
Co-Director, Research for Genomics
Karen leads the research teams within Wales Gene Park who strive to make genomic technologies and expertise available to researchers across Wales. Her research interests encompass the use of pre-clinical models of disease to explore the critical molecular events which contribute to the initiation and progression of tumourigenesis (primarily within the intestine and liver).
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.
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.
Rob Maddison
Research Technician
Having spent a few years after completing his Biochemistry BSc at Cardiff in the brewing industry, Rob has eagerly re-joined the fold of frontier benchtop science with Wales Gene Park. With a keen interest in genomics in personalised medicine and exploring novel techniques, Rob supports the lab and bioinformatics teams with day to day activities.
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
Sam Hill
Bioinformatician
Joining Wales Gene Park as a Bioinformatician in 2020, Sam brings contemporary knowledge gained from an MSc in Bioinformatics studied at Cardiff University along with a keen interest in oncology and psychiatric disorders. Driven to develop productive working relationships, Sam has experience in various RNA-Seq analyses including single cell RNA-Seq analysis and fusion gene detection pipelines.
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.
Beata Fonferko-Shadrach
Clinical Database Officer
Beata is a Clinical Database Officer, currently working on developing a system for creating structured data sets from unstructured clinical data using a Natural Language Processing application. She also curates the Swansea Clinical Epilepsy database
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)
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
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Academic Leads
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