What motivated you to come to Bristol and do this programme? 

I was first attracted by the research going on in the department - there’s so much expertise here in Mendelian randomisation, reproductive health and causal inference. There’s also a very warm and friendly culture here which I got a feel for during my application and interview. Finally, Bristol’s such a vibrant city so I was excited to move here. 

What is the key research question of your PhD research project and what have you found out so far? 

For my main PhD project I’ll be investigating whether drugs cause adverse pregnancy outcomes. There's a lack of evidence on this due to the ethical issues around conducting clinical trials in pregnant people, so I'll be using drug-target Mendelian randomisation to predict these effects using data in the MR-PREG consortium. 

Where do you think your research could lead and what are your future career plans now? 

My main aim is to produce some useful, open access results for clinicians and pregnant people. As I’m just at the start of my first year here I’ve not decided what I’d like to go on to do next in my career yet!