Lavinia Paternoster
Professor
University of Bristol
UK
Biography
She is an Associate Professor in Genetic Epidemiology at the Medical Research Council – Integrative Epidemiology Unit at the University of Bristol, UK. My expertise is in the genetic epidemiology of atopic dermatitis. I have led several large international GWAS meta-analyses of atopic dermatitis within the EAGLE consortium. My research now also includes functionally characterizing the identified genetic associations using in silico bioinformatic approaches that combine multiple layers of omics data, as well as using these genetic associations as instruments to assess causality in observational associations using a statistical technique called Mendelian Randomisation. I teach genetic epidemiology to undergraduate, Master's, and postgraduate students. My interest in genetics started during A-levels at School. I studied Biology at York University and then moved to Edinburgh for an MSc in Quantitative Genetics and Genome Analysis. I also received my PhD in Stroke Genetics from the University of Edinburgh, before taking up my first post-doc position in Bristol in 2009 to analyze the newly generated genome-wide data in the ALSPAC cohort. A love of Bristol ensued, and I remain here over a decade later, now with a family, including two young children, who occasionally let me practice yoga and Pilates, cycle, paddle-board and go sailing
Research Interest
Dermatology