Katy is a post-doctoral researcher at the University of Cambridge. Her main research interest is investigating the evolution of viruses, particularly uncharacterised and poorly characterised viruses, using genomics and big data analysis. Her research involves computational identification and characterisation of previously unknown RNA viruses in a wide range of different species. She is also a college research associate at King’s College.
Katy is particularly interested big data analysis and in using freely available public datasets in new ways. She is passionate about teaching science, programming and data analysis to young people and non-scientists and has lots of experience of teaching university students and of working with students with disabilities. She has also been involved in several public outreach programmes. Katy is excited to be involved with the Inclusive Business Lab and to help bring leadership skills, teamwork and scientific understanding to the next generation of young people.
Katy completed her PhD at the University of Nottingham in 2014, investigating ancient viruses infecting primates. She was then trained in computational genomics at the University of Oxford, as a CGAT post-doctoral fellow. Outside of academia, she loves to travel and has volunteered in South Africa, Mexico and the USA.