I am an incoming Royal Society Career Development Fellow at Newcastle University, and Visiting Scientist at Sanger Institute. I am interested in how blood and immune formation is regulated by the nervous system in development. I have specialised in the fields of bioinformatics, single-cell analysis, immunology, developmental biology, and neurobiology.

Summary

I was born and raised in London and am a first-generation Jamaican migrant. I am grateful for the places my journey in academia has taken me so far.

My Royal Society Career Development Fellowship (2025-2029) will take ‘A systems approach to unravel neural regulation of embryonic haematopoiesis’.

My postdoctoral research ‘A single cell atlas of late human embryogenesis’ (in preparation) at Newcastle University’s Faculty of Medical Sciences contributed to the Human Cell Atlas Initiative, which aims to create the world’s first comprehensive atlas of all human cells. For this work, I was awarded the Howard Hughes Medical Institute Janelia Leading Edge Fellowship (2023) and was a finalist for the British Society for Immunology Early Career Researcher’s Award (2023).

My PhD research ‘Using single-cell multiomics to characterise haematopoiesis in human fetal bone marrow’ was published in Nature in September 2021, and was awarded the Newcastle University Faculty Medical Sciences Doctoral Thesis Prize (2022), and Honourable Mentions for the International Birnstiel Award for Doctoral Research in Molecular Life Sciences (2021) and Doctoral Researcher’s Award in Natural and Life Sciences (2022).

I care deeply about equity in access to higher education, and have been involved in community building and voluntary scientific outreach work since the beginning of my academic journey. I have almost 10 years experience in the charity sector.

My research papers are listed on a separate page, and can also be found using my ORCID or Google Scholar profile.

Skill-set

  • Coding languages: Proficient in Python, R, and Linux/Unix. You can find examples of my recent code on GitHub

  • High performance computing clusters: batch submission of scripts, including use of shell script

  • Adobe Illustrator: preparation of figures for publication

  • Microsoft Office: preparation of word documents for publication and wrangling of data

A bit more about my journey into academia

I began my MSci in Biological Sciences in 2014 at University College London (UCL). I enjoyed taught modules in bioinformatics. I spent my third year on an exchange programme at the University of Queensland, Australia where I conducted an independent research project in mathematical modelling of antibiotic resistance under the supervision of Associate Professor Jan Engelstaedter.

Upon my return to UCL, I wrote a final year Master’s dissertation entitled: ‘Identifying plant genes of unknown function’. My dissertation was written under supervision of Professor Christophe Dessimoz and Dr Natasha Glover, whom I was fortunate enough to first practice object-oriented programming with at the Universite de Lausanne, Switzerland. I completed my undergraduate MSci Biological Sciences at UCL in 2018, where I graduated with a first class honours.

I moved to Newcastle in 2018, where I began my PhD funded by the Barbour Foundation, under the supervision of Professor Muzlifah Haniffa, and seeking to elucidate the mechanisms by which life-long blood formation are initiated. I was awarded my PhD in December 2021.