Heather joined the group as DPhil student on the Oxford Interdisciplinary Bioscience DTP programme.
Previously, she studied Biochemistry with a Year in Research, at Imperial College London which involved a
year placement studying the genetic basis of primary lymphedema at St George’s University. Once at Oxford,
she undertook both of her two rotations in the Sir William Dunn School of Pathology; firstly with Dr Eva Gluenz,
studying the flagellar proteome of Leishmania mexicana, and the second with Professor Conrad Nieduszynski,
developing methods to probe chromatin structure. She chose to continue pursuing the latter as her DPhil project,
in the context of DNA replication in Saccharomyces cerevisiae. Her research interests focus around
understanding the stochastic or non-stochastic nature of protein loading on to DNA in the initial
steps of DNA replication.
Beyond her research, Heather competed in the Biotechnology Young Entrepreneurs Scheme (YES)
competition 2018, led the Dunn School Graduate Student Association and demonstrated for
Bacteriology undergraduate modules and Programming and Bioinformatics graduate modules.
In addition, she wrote for the departmental news desk, participated in lab public engagement activities,
learnt Scottish Country dancing and plays violin with the Ozymandias String Quartet.