OUR TEAMS

Leadership Team

Dr. Andrew Fry

Director

Andrew is a Clinical Geneticist with a research interest in childhood neurodevelopmental disorders. He has been Director of Wales Gene Park since 2020. Andrew leads Wales Gene Park teams in deploying developments in genetics and genomics to aid research and the improve the lives of patients in Wales and beyond.

Dr. Hywel Williams

Co-Director, Senior Lecturer (Cardiff University)

My research is focused on improving our understanding of the biological systems that when dysregulated lead to disease phenotypes in humans. Primarily I am working on rare diseases with an emphasis on neuro-related phenotypes. One of my main interests is how gene expression is regulated both spatially and temporally during development and, how DNA variation can influence this. To understand this will require knowledge of how the genome is organised in 3D space, which regions of the genome interact to regulate gene expression and, the full repertoire of variation each individual possesses within both the coding and non-coding genome. My aim is to improve our ability to make a diagnosis in the 50-60 % patients with a rare disease who currently remain undiagnosed and, armed with this knowledge, build a better understanding of the functional biology that leads to disease. In turn, this will improve our ability to develop new therapeutics to treat patients and in the future may even allow us to prevent these diseases form occurring. To achieve our goals will require us to work together as a community to share our data in an open and transparent way.

Caroline Ready

Co-Director, Operations and Business Manager

Caroline’s background includes 20+ years of management experience in educational and local government settings. Caroline joined Cardiff University School of Medicine in 2017 as first Business Development Manager for the LIPID MAPS Lipidomics Gateway and then (in 2022) as Strategic Business Manager for the Welsh Institute of Minimal Access Therapy.
Within Wales Gene Park, Caroline’s role includes managing day to day operations, whilst also developing and building activity across the portfolio and business side.
Through her personal life, Caroline has contributed strategically at Board level within both a Primary school and a Credit Union.

Dr. Rhian Morgan

Co-Director, Education and Engagement Manager

Rhian’s background is in biomedical research and she has worked in academic, industrial, and clinical settings. Additionally, she has worked with individuals and families affected by genetic conditions. She is the Education and Engagement Officer for Wales Gene Park where she helps deliver a busy and varied programme of genetics and genomics-related activities to the public, schools and colleges, health professionals, and patients and families.

Education and Engagement Team

Dr. Rhian Morgan

Co-Director, Education and Engagement Manager

Emma Hughes

Policy and Engagement Manager for Wales

Emma also leads patient and public involvement in research for Wales Gene Park as well as being the Policy and Engagement Manager for Genetic Alliance UK’s work in Wales. Emma’s work includes policy, public affairs, communications, and organising events to generate and communicate a patient and family viewpoint on policy and practice relating to the development of genetics and genomics in healthcare in Wales.

Isabella Parker

Education and Engagement Officer

Isabella’s background is in biomedical sciences and cancer biology research. She has worked in a range of clinical environments, providing care and assistance for patients affected by genetic conditions. She is an Education & Engagement Officer at Wales Gene Park, delivering public engagement by planning and providing genetics and genomics-based activities and events to schools & colleges, public, patients and health professionals.

Nina Lazarou

Education Assistant

Nina provides administrative assistance for the Education and Engagement programme.

Eleanor Welsh

Education and Engagement Officer

Ellie’s background is in biomedical science prior to completing the Genetic and Genomic Counselling MSc at Cardiff University. This has given her a particular interest in rare disease and ethical considerations within clinical genetics and genomics. Ellie is also an Education & Engagement Officer at Wales Gene Park, delivering public engagement by planning and providing genetics and genomics-based activities and events to schools & colleges, public, patients and health professionals.

Genomics for Research Teams

Genomic Facility Team

Shelley Rundle

Genomic Facility Manager

Shelley offers the Genomics Facility Team 30 years of laboratory expertise, from the linkage of ricin A-chains with antibodies for targeted tumour therapy to her current role supporting the preparation of Next Generation Sequencing libraries. She is part of a team that strive to provide personalised support to our researchers in Wales.

Dr. Giulia Trauzzi

Senior Technician

Giulia has a background in population genomics. She has experience in DNA extraction and amplification (including ancient DNA) and diverse set of molecular markers. Her bioinformatic skills include QC of genomic data, variant calling, population and seascape genomics analyses and competency in coding languages (R/Rstudio, Unix/Linux – Cluster computing). She joined the Wales Gene Park in 2023 where her duties include NGS library preparations, Illumina and Oxford Nanopore sequencing and analysis of NGS data.

Bioinformatic Team

Dr. Benoit Lan-Leung

Senior Bioinformatician

Ben has led genomic, transcriptomic and methylomic research on wide variety of topics, including imprinting disorders and Alzheimer’s disease. Although specialised in bioinformatics, Ben has spent several years doing wet lab experiments, which facilitate the understand of the ins and outs of research projects. Leading the bioinformatic team at Wales Gene Park, Ben is also keen on novel analysis approaches, shallow machine learning and development of pipeline workflow using Nextflow.

Dr. Aimee Bettridge

Bioinformatician

Aimee’s background encompasses clinical molecular microbiology, environmental bacteriology and mycology, in addition to plant biology of agricultural significance. Of importance, Aimee has tested and developed Illumina 16S rRNA gene sequencing and community fingerprinting for the routine screening of lung bacterial microbiota. She has also employed Illumina whole genome sequencing to better-characterise Achromobacter species through phylogenomics, pangenome analysis, SNP analysis, antimicrobial resistance and its virulence. In contrast, Aimee has exploited genome mining to determine the biosynthetic potential of both non-pathogenic and pathogenic bacteria. Aimee is also familiar with the analysis of transcriptomic data and qPCR data through studying climatic effects on forage grass gene expression. Aimee’s key duties at WGP involves QC of sequence data in addition to bespoke analysis of NGS data.

Genomics Integration into SAIL

Prof. Kerina Jones

Population Data Science (Swansea University)

Kerina is Wales Gene Park lead for genomic integration into SAIL databank. Through her role as the Associate Director for Information Governance and Public Engagement (IG&PE), Kerina works to ensure data protection and to maximise socially-acceptable data utility across the various population data Science initiatives, including: the SAIL Databank, Administrative Data Research Centre Wales, and the HDRUK collaboration.