About us

Alice E. Hughes

Alice is a diabetes clinician and postdoctoral researcher in the group. Her research focuses on the genetics of fetal insulin-mediated growth and its implications for pregnancy and postnatal outcomes. 

Aminata H. Cisse

Aminata is a postdoctoral research associate with strong expertise in growth modelling and quantitative analysis. Her PhD in Epidemiology from the University of Paris-Cité focused on the genetic and early biological determinants of adiposity rebound using data from French birth cohorts (EDEN, ELFE). Her current research focuses on genetic risk scores associated with gestational diabetes during vs. after pregnancy.

Miranda Geddes-Barton

Miranda is a Clinical Lecturer in Obstetrics and Gynaecology who splits her time between clinical work and post-doctoral level research. Her PhD at the University of Oxford investigated the association between socioeconomic disadvantage and adverse maternal health outcomes using population-level hospital data. She is interested in using genetic methods such as Mendelian Randomisation to understand causal associations between risk factors and reproductive health outcomes.

Rachel M. Freathy

Rachel is a Professor of Human Genetics, Wellcome Senior Research Fellow and leader of the Pregnancy and Fetal Growth Genomics Team. She has led studies that have identified more than 250 regions of the human genome where variations in the genetic code influence birth weight or placental weight. These studies have illuminated genetic links between early growth and later disease and have provided insights into causal links between maternal characteristics, fetal growth and adverse pregnancy outcomes.

Robin N. Beaumont

Robin is a BRC translational research fellow in the Department of Clinical and Biomedical Sciences. His background is in mathematics and statistics, and his research interests are in developing bioinformatic methods and pipelines to understand the role of genetics in complex human phenotypes.

Rosie Purdy

Rosie is a Graduate Research Assistant who joined the group in November 2024, having graduated with an integrated master’s degree in biological sciences (with a thesis focusing on population genomics) at Cardiff University. Now she is investigating how genetic and intrauterine factors affect fetal growth at different stages of pregnancy.

Shuhe Li

Shuhe is a Graduate Research Assistant who joined the group in January 2025. She holds an MSc degree in Health Data Science from the University of Exeter. Her project focuses on genetic clustering analysis of birth weight-related loci.