Speakers

I came to Oxford on an Erasmus exchange scholarship in 1993, after an MSc in Biomedical Sciences (Cum Laude, 1995), at Leiden University, the Netherlands. Following a DPhil (NDOG/DPH, St Edmund Hall, 1999) on the epidemiology of chronic pelvic pain, I was awarded an MRC Training Research Fellowship in Genetic Epidemiology based at the Wellcome Trust Centre for Human Genetics, which included an MSc in Genetic Epidemiology (Erasmus University Rotterdam, Netherlands, 2001) and research periods at the Queensland Institute for Medical Research, Australia and the Dept of Human Genetics, University of Pittsburgh, USA. 

In 2007, I was awarded a Wellcome Trust Research Career Development Fellowship and in 2012 became Co-Director of the Endometriosis CaRe centre in Oxford (with Christian Becker). I was appointed as Professor of Reproductive and Genomic Epidemiology in 2015. I am Fellow by Special Election at St Edmund Hall. Awards include Outstanding Female Scientist (AcademiaNet, Wellcome Trust nomination, 2013), Honorary Skou Professorship at the University of Aarhus, Denmark (2019), Honorary Fellowship ad eundem by the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists, UK (2022), and Honorary Fellowship of the Academy of Medical Sciences (2024). I have served on numerous boards and funding committees in the areas of women's health and genomics.