Dr Louisa Chenciner

Louisa is a public health physician with demonstrated experience in climate health, syndemics, and social protection. Last year, she was awarded an NIHR funded academic clinical fellowship in public health medicine. Louisa’s work spans academia and real-world public health, with a commitment to addressing the intersections between climate change, sustainability and health. She is currently an honorary research fellow at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, and an active member of the Oxford University Clinical Academic Graduate School. She also works in local government at Oxfordshire County Council, and contributes regularly to the on-call rota for health protection at the UK Health Security Agency. To date, Louisa has a range of clinical and academic experience in the UK, Sweden, India and Brazil.

Sally Sansom

Sally is a Junior Research Fellow within the Centre for Personalised Medicine and a Doctor of Philosophy (DPhil) candidate within the Health Economics Research Centre (HERC) at the University of Oxford. Prior to commencing her DPhil, Sally worked for eight-years in roles spanning health economics and strategy consulting, and medical research / clinical trial project management. Sally also holds a Bachelor of Biomedicine (genetics major) from the University of Melbourne, and a Master of Public Health (health economics specialism) from Monash University in Australia.

Sally is passionate about progressing the health economics evidence base required to support the cost-effective translation of genomic diagnostic and therapeutic technologies into routine care. In particular, Sally’s research interests lie in improving our understanding of how best to measure the outcomes from genome sequencing for rare disease diagnosis in economic evaluations. Sally is also interested in exploring the spill-over effects of genomic information within families.

More information about Sally’s research can be found here.

Dr Rachel Horton

Rachel joined CELS in June 2018 to do a PhD. She has nearly completed her training as a clinical geneticist and is spending some time doing dedicated clinical ethics research.

Rachel’s research, funded by a Wellcome Trust Research Award for Health Professionals in Humanities and Social Sciences, explores what we should consider to be a genomic result. Genomic testing identifies the millions of variations that each of us has within our genetic code, and Rachel is interested in how and why decisions are made as to which of these variations should be considered the ‘result’ of a genomic test.

Rachel studied medicine at Oxford, doing an intercalated BA in Molecular Medicine in 2008. She worked as a junior doctor in the Severn deanery before moving to Southampton in 2015 to train in clinical genetics. She completed an MSc in Genomic Medicine at the University of Southampton in 2018.

Dr Ali Kay

Ali joined the CPM in September 2023. She is currently a co-investigator on an NIHR Research for Patient Benefit funded project – iPREGCARE. This project is investigating the implications of a new personalised recurrence risk assessment for couples who have had a child with a serious genetic condition. Ali also has a research interest in experiences with direct-to-consumer DNA testing. She is a member of the Association of Genetic Nurses and Counsellors (AGNC) and British Psychological Society (BPS). In addition to her research, Ali has over ten years experience in rare disease patient advocacy in research and is committed to both evidencing experiences of patients and families in personalised medicine and effective public involvement and engagement.

Ali completed her doctorate at Nuffield College, Oxford. She was an early career researcher applying social science approaches to history before pivoting and adding masters degrees in Genomic Counselling and Psychology. She has worked at the University of Oxford since 2022 and previously as a research fellow at Northumbria University, King’s College London, and the University of Westminster and also held teaching positions at Lancaster University and the Open University.

Dr Susie Weller

Susie Weller is a CPM Research Fellow. Her current work forms part of the ‘Ethical Preparedness in Genomic Medicine’ study (Wellcome Trust, 2018-24), which combines conceptual, empirical, and theoretical work to examine the ethical and social challenges that arise for those living and working with genetic and genomic results. Susie draws on a range of conceptual tools from family and lifecourse sociology and employs qualitative longitudinal research approaches to explore, over time, interactions between individuals, those within their networks, and the wider social processes and structures shaping their experiences. She is particularly interested in: how patients and families navigate different routes through genomic medicine; the resources and support on which they draw to manage the process; how participants conceive of their data journey; and how caring relationships, identities and practices evolve over time.

Dr Sarah Briggs

Sarah Briggs is one of the CPM’s Junior Research Fellows in Medical Sciences. Her DPhil research, funded by the Medical Research Council, evaluated the use of polygenic risk scores in predicting bowel cancer risk. Sarah’s ongoing research interests include assessing the environmental impact of the genomic technologies increasingly employed to personalise healthcare. She studied medicine at the University of Oxford, and is a clinician, training in Medical Oncology in Oxford.

Catherine Lidbetter

Catherine is responsible for the operational running and day-to-day development of the Centre for Personalised Medicine. She liaises with the administrative, development, communications, finance and publicity offices at St Anne’s College, and with the Wellcome Centre for Human Genetics, the Medical Sciences Division and more broadly across other University of Oxford departments. Catherine manages the CPM website and co-organises the CPM’s events.

Catherine’s background is in Librarianship. She worked as a subject librarian at Oxford Brookes University for over a decade and at the University of Reading prior to that. Her first degree is in Music.

Thea Perry

Thea joined the CPM in 2015, and has enjoyed working on a huge variety of events during this time. Day-to-day she organises the CPM’s events, and runs the CPM website and social media accounts.

Thea has a degree in Events Management and previously worked as a PA.

Professor Anneke Lucassen

Anneke was appointed Director of the CPM in August 2021. She is delighted to return to Oxford, and the Wellcome Centre for Human Genetics, after 2 decades as Professor at the Faculty of Medicine, University of Southampton. She also holds an honorary consultant physician post, now at the Oxford regional genetics service. Her research focuses on the ethical and legal aspects of developments in genetics and genomics.

Much more information on Anneke’s research can be found here.