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Research Interests
I joined the Molecular Psychiatry Lab, Department of Psychiatry, in February 2021. My research focuses primarily on the heritability of bipolar disorder.
Psychiatric conditions are complex due to gene-gene and gene-environment interactions, as well as to genetic overlaps between psychiatric disorders. The resulting heterogeneity is associated with under- and misdiagnosis, potentially leading to ineffective treatments. Highly heritable, bipolar disorder is correlated with schizophrenia, major depression, as well as attention-deficit and hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). This results in an array of bipolar disorder subtypes far more challenging to treat than homogeneous disorders.
Investigating the genetic overlaps between psychiatric disorders, provides crucial insights into the shared and unique mechanisms/pathways underpinning bipolar disorder subtypes. This has the potential to identify causal variations which can be further investigated through functional studies. Therefore, characterising the heterogeneity in psychiatric disorders is important in the development of clinical classifications, predicting disease course, as well as future pharmacological therapies.
Research interests: molecular genetics, integrative multi-omics analyses, computational psychiatry and deep learning intelligence tools for healthcare