Charlotte Fawcett

I am a Wellcome Trust 1+4-Year Genomic Epidemiology and Public Health Genomics student supervised by Dr Chris Nelson, Professor Veryan Codd and Professor Frank Dudbridge. I obtained my MSc in Medical Statistics during the first year of my PhD programme and previously obtained my MSc in Molecular Genetics from the University of Leicester.
 
I also have an interest in science communication, having completed the Online and Media Writing module from UWE’s MSc in Science Communication, obtaining a merit. During my PhD I also undertook a part-time placement with the University of Leicester’s UK Student Recruitment and Outreach team, being involved in a range of activities including the development of an academic-related science communication activity.

My PhD research involves using a telomere length (TL) instrument for Mendelian Randomization (MR) methods, with a particular focus on abdominal aortic aneurysm (AAA). This work has involved me using a TL instrument to investigate causality with disease outcomes such as Parkinson’s disease and AAA. I have also used MVMR and two-step MR methods to investigate potential mediators of the relationship between TL and AAA. Additionally, I have investigated the TL instrument, using both biologically-driven and data-driven clustering approaches to determine how further consideration of the instrument used can provide additional insight into the telomere-disease relationship.

6th Mendelian Randomisation Conference, University of Bristol, June 2024. ‘Comparing data-driven and biologically-driven approaches to clustering Mendelian randomization instruments’

American Society of Human Genetics, Washington DC, November 2023. ‘Interrogating Mendelian Randomisation instruments for biological plausibility’ *

Doctoral College Researchers Conference, University of Leicester, April 2023. Poster presentation ‘From academia to enterprise: A student perspective of YES’ *

European Mathematical Genetics Meeting, University of Surrey, April 2023. ‘Causal mediation analysis of telomere length and CVD’ *

Cardiovascular Sciences Symposium, University of Leicester, June 2022. ‘Is telomere length causal for Parkinson’s disease: an MR study’ *

* Indicates a poster presentation

MSc Medical Statistics, 2020-2021 - University of Leicester

MSc Molecular Genetics, 2019-2020 - University of Leicester

BSc Medical Genetics (with a Year Abroad), 2015-2019 - University of Leicester