Ailsa MacCalman

Ailsa was awarded a PhD studentship at the University of Exeter in 2019, under the supervision of Professor Jon Mill, Dr Elisa De Franco, and Dr Aaron Jeffries and collaboration with Professor Noel Morgan, and Professor Andrew Hattersley. Ailsa graduated with her Masters degree in Biomedical Science in 2018 from the University of Lincoln, where she researched autoimmune responses in Type 1 diabetes patients and HLA-DR4/DQ8 transgenic mice. With a keen interest in diabetes research, Ailsa took on the role of a research technician with the Diabetes and Metabolism group at the University of Bristol, before accepting her PhD studentship. / / Ailsa’s project is focused on genomic regulation in the development of the human pancreas. Her project will evaluate the epigenetic and transcriptional changes which occur in the pancreas as it develops in utero, and compare this to patterns of gene regulation in the fully developed adult pancreas- facilitating a systematic exploration of hypotheses related to the developmental origins of diseases affecting the pancreas.