Trainer biographies
Chiara Batini | University of Leicester
Chiara is a Senior Research Fellow in the Department of Population Health Sciences at University of Leicester, as part of the Leicester Biomedical Research Centre. With a background in evolutionary biology, she has dedicated the first part of her career to the study of human genetic diversity, with a special focus on sex-biased processes and the role of culture and climate in the history of Central Africa and Europe. In late 2016 she joined the Genetic Epidemiology group to contribute to the development of precision medicine approaches in the context of multi-ethnicity. Smoking behaviours have been the centre of her recent UKRI Innovation Fellowship at HDR UK, during which she has published the first genetic study of smoking focussed on individuals from continental Africa. Beyond this, she contributes to the sample and data management for the Extended Cohort for E-health, Environment and DNA (EXCEED), as well as to large-scale genetic studies of respiratory health, COVID-19 and blood pressure. Chiara has developed and delivered NGS and bioinformatics training courses in the context of several international programmes since 2013.
Jorge Batista da Rocha | EMBL-EBI
Dr. Jorge Batista da Rocha is the Ensembl Outreach Project Leader since September 2024. He has experience in bioinformatics training development and capacity building for genomics applications. He is a keen trainer, and enjoys developing training formats that bridge technical barriers and empower participants in their research. He is striving to create a world where genomics guided innovations are equitable and available to all.
Kayesha Coley | University of Leicester
Kayesha Coley is a Research Associate in Genetic Epidemiology in the Department of Population Health Sciences at the University of Leicester. Her research interests lie in the fields of statistical genetics, bioinformatics and computable phenotypes. She recently completed her PhD which utilised electronic health records linked to longitudinal population studies to perform observational pharmacogenomic studies. Her project also explored the role of ancestry-specific genetic variation in drug effectiveness and adverse drug reactions. Prior to starting her PhD, Kayesha spent four years studying at the University of Sheffield, receiving a BSc (Hons) in Biochemistry and Genetics and a MSc in Genomic Medicine.
Xena Dyball | EMBL-EBI
Xena is a PhD student in the Adriaenssens group at the Quadram Institute Bioscience, where she investigates the roles of bacteriophage infection and prophage carriage in bacterial adaptation to the human gut. Before joining the Quadram Institute, she received her integrated masters (MBio) degree in biomedical sciences from the University of Warwick, and worked as a research scientist at UKHSA Porton Down for a year, where she worked on various projects related to antimicrobial resistance interventions.
As part of her PhD Xena undertook a 3 month internship within the EMBL-EBI training team, where she developed digital learning resources for life sciences data services.
Erik Garrison | University of Tennessee Health Science Center
Associate Professor
College of Medicine – University of Tennessee Health Science Center
Department of Genetics, Genomics & Informatics
Jose Maria Gonzalez Perez-Silva | EMBL-EBI
I have a PhD in Biology and have been conducting research in the field of genomics and health for several years. My focus has been on understanding genomic mechanisms involved in ageing and cancer, and developing expertise in omic analysis techniques. In addition to my research, I have a strong passion for teaching and have experience training others in the use of different tools. I believe that sharing one’s knowledge and experience with others is a must for advancing our understanding of life.
Pille Hallast | The Jackson Laboratory for Genomic Medicine
Pille is a Research Scientist at The Jackson Laboratory for Genomic Medicine. Her research focuses on the evolution, structure, and variation of complex regions in the human genome, particularly the Y chromosome, and their implications for human health and disease. She has previously investigated the genetic diversity and population genetics of humans and great apes, as well as the impact of Y-chromosomal structural variation on male fertility. Since joining The Jackson Laboratory in 2021, she has been deeply involved in the Human Genome Structural Variation Consortium, aiming to improve the discovery and characterization of complex genomic regions. As part of this effort, she utilized long-read sequencing to produce the first complete Y chromosome assemblies from multiple individuals, offering new insights into its structure and genetic diversity.
Mohab Helmy | EMBL-EBI
Mohab obtained degrees of Pharmaceutical Sciences and Biotechnology before completing his PhD in Genomics at the University of Essex, where he studied the evolution of microRNA regulation of cell signalling. Following his PhD studies, Mohab was appointed as a postdoctoral research assistant at King’s College London. In 2019, Mohab joined EMBL-EBI as a postdoctoral fellow in the Keane research group where he takes part in the Mouse Genomes Project.
Sarah Hunt | EMBL-EBI
Sarah Hunt works as Variation Resources Coordinator at EMBL-EBI on projects including Ensembl, DECIPHER and Gene2Phenotype, which facilitate the use of genomic data in clinical and research settings. Prior to this she worked at the Sanger Institute where she contributed to the Human Genome Project, the HapMap Project and studies investigating human genomic variation and association with disease.
Sean Laidlaw | Sanger Institute
Sean Laidlaw is a PhD student in the department of Cancer Ageing and Somatic Mutation at the Wellcome Sanger Institute where he is using spatial multi-omic approaches for studying the pre-cancerous landscape of the breast. Before joining the Sanger as a PhD student, he obtained his MSc in Bioinformatics and Data Science at the University of Montpellier (Montpellier, France) and worked at Sanger as a Bioinformatician for two years in the Rahbari group. Sean’s previous work leveraged single-cell genomics and transcriptomics to study the impact of ageing on oocyte health, studying the developmental trajectories of T cells in breast cancer, and spatially exploring the immune environment of kidney cancer.
Victor Flores Lopez | University of Cambridge
PHP, JS, Python, Perl, AWK & Bash Developer
Bioinformatician specialized in microbial, human and plant genomics
Scientist with a vast experience handling data from NGS, proteomics and molecular biology experiments.
My goals include the design and implementation of new algorithms, the design and publication of web-based tutorials, data-management platforms, and guidelines for basic and advanced projects.
Raheleh Rahbari | Sanger Institute
Raheleh Rahbari is a group leader at the Sanger Institute investigating mutations arising in cancer and normal human cells during lifetime. With a background in Medical genetics and evolutionary genomics. My research focuses on understanding mutations acquired during ageing, with an aim to provide insight into the development, maintenance, mutational processes, and the role of selection in shaping cell populations. Over the past few years, systematic sequencing of tumours has revolutionised our understanding of cancer evolution. This has revealed that most cancers carry elevated number of mutations, accumulated through the lifetime of their cells. However, due to technical limitations, little is known about the pre-cancerous stage and how normal cells within our tissues accumulate mutations during ageing and in their progression towards cancer and/or other diseases. We investigate these early changes by studying somatic evolution in normal and precancerous tissues. Our current research focuses on understanding the role of germline predisposition on extent of somatic evolution in normal tissues, and the mechanisms that protect the germline cells from accumulating mutations during ageing.
Rashesh Sanghvi | Sanger Institute
Rashesh Sanghvi is a Senior Bioinformatician at the Cancer predisposition and Ageing Group, Sanger Institute. He explores how inherited changes in DNA may predespose children to develop cancer or other genetic disorders.
Charles Solomon | University of Leicester
Dr Charles Solomon is a Bioinformatician at the Department of Cardiovascular Sciences, University of Leicester. He uses large OMICS datasets to investigate gene regulatory networks.
Maxime Tarabichi | IRIBHM (Université Libre de Bruxelles)
Maxime studied engineering 2005-2010 at the Faculty of Applied Sciences, Université Libre de Bruxelles (ULB) and specialised in medical informatics and imagery. He then embarked on a PhD in computational biology with Vincent Detours at the Faculty of Medicine (ULB) from 2010-2015, during which he integrated multiple omics bulk profiles of thyroid cancers. He joined Peter Van Loo’s group at the Crick early 2016 and studied intratumour heterogeneity across cancer types in light of cancer evolution, with a focus on rare sarcomas. He was also a visiting scientist at the Wellcome Sanger Institute in the lab of Thierry Voet, where he developed expertise in single-cell sequencing. He is now an Assistant Professor at ULB, Group Leader at IRIBHM, and a visiting scientist at the MD Anderson Cancer Center, studying the thyroid, somatic evolution and cancer genomics.
Daniel Thomas López | EMBL-EBI
Daniel joined the Training team in September 2020 as Scientific Project Manager, working on several EU-funded projects, mainly PerMedCoE, EOSC-Life, and BioExcel. He organises and facilitates face-to-face as well as online training based on competency frameworks and training needs analyses that he develops. In his activities, he engages with partners and new collaborators, and coordinates stakeholders involved to ensure high quality outputs.
He studied Veterinary Medicine at the Complutense University of Madrid, Spain. He holds a PhD in Molecular Biology, Biochemistry, and Biomedicine, and he completed the ECDC-EUPHEM fellowship (the Public Health Microbiology path of the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control Programme). Over the course of his career he has worked on a variety of topics in microbiology, antimicrobial resistance, and infectious diseases.
Daniel has delivered undergraduate as well as postgraduate teaching and training at different universities. He has organised several scientific conferences and events, and he is an active collaborator in science dissemination.
