معرفی
Eilis Hannon is an Associate Professor in Bioinformatics at the University of Exeter Medical School and leads the Complex Disease Epigenetics Group. She holds a prestigious 5-year EPSRC Research Software Engineering Fellowship and serves as Assistant Director for Education in the Institute of Data Science and Artificial Intelligence, driving initiatives in reproducible research and data science education.
Education:
- BSc in Mathematics, Cardiff University (2010)
- PhD in Bioinformatics, Cardiff University Centre for Psychological Medicine and Clinical Neurosciences (2014)
Her research integrates statistical genetics, epigenomics, and bioinformatics to investigate molecular mechanisms in schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and neurodegenerative diseases. She develops novel computational methods for analyzing DNA methylation dynamics across the lifespan and cell-type-specific epigenetic changes in brain disorders, with strong emphasis on open science and reproducible research practices.
Recent publications demonstrate her leadership in multi-omics integration, particularly in cell-type-specific epigenetic epidemiology, biomarker development for neurological conditions, and methodological advances in long-read sequencing. Her work spans psychiatric disorders, Alzheimer's disease, and ALS, consistently linking genetic risk variants to functional epigenetic consequences through innovative analytical frameworks.
Scientific Awards:
- EPSRC Research Software Engineering Fellowship
- NARSAD Young Investigator Award
- Alan Turing Pilot Project award
- Alzheimer's Society PhD studentship
- Software Sustainability Institute fellowship
- Alan Turing Institute Skills Policy Award
As an educator, she directs the Coding for Reproducible Research training programme and mentors over 20 PhD students. She has secured substantial funding from MRC, NIA, ARUK, and the Brain and Behaviour Research Foundation, serving as PI on the EPSRC Fellowship and co-applicant on multiple international grants. Her leadership extends to the MRC GW4 Biomed DTP and the MSc module Statistics for Health and Life Sciences.
She co-leads the Exeter Brain Health Analytics network within the NIHR Exeter Biomedical Research Centre and the Institute for Data Science and Artificial Intelligence, fostering cross-disciplinary collaborations in neurogenetics and computational biology.
