Professor Jean Golding
Graduated from Oxford in 1961. A career break for childcare was followed by employment 1966–8 by the team analysing data from the 1958 British National Birth Survey followed by a research fellowship at the Galton Laboratory, Department of Human Genetics and Biometry in UCL where she obtained a PhD. Employment at Oxford University in Richard Doll’s department and then the National Perinatal Epidemiology Unit was followed by a move to the University of Bristol in 1980. She worked as a senior research epidemiologist and obtained a DSc for published work. She assisted in the design and analysis of birth surveys in Greece (1983) and Jamaica (1986), before creating the design and development of the ELSPAC and ALSPAC pre-birth cohorts; she continued as scientific and executive director of ALSPAC until the end of 2005. She is now Emeritus Professor of Paediatric and Perinatal Epidemiology at the University of Bristol where she is still research active. Professor Jean Golding – Our People (bristol.ac.uk)
Professor Marcus Pembrey
Professor Pembrey is a clinical geneticist with a research interest in non-Mendelian inheritance in humans. He is Emeritus Professor of Paediatric Genetics at UCL Great Ormond Street Institute of Child Health and Visiting Professor of Paediatric Genetics, University of Bristol. He featured in a 2005 ‘Horizon’ program on BBC television called ‘The Ghost in Your Genes’.
Born into a medical family, Marcus Pembrey spent his childhood in Hurstpierpoint, Sussex, where his father was a General Practitioner. The rural setting and his aunts’ farm encouraged an interest in natural history. Educated at Hurstpierpoint College, he went to Guy’s Hospital Medical School, London in 1960; with postgraduate research training at the Nuffield Unit of Medical Genetics, University of Liverpool 1969-71.
After further clinical training at Guy’s Hospital, in 1979 he was appointed head of the new Mothercare Unit of Paediatric Genetics at the Institute of Child Health, London and Honorary consultant clinical geneticist at the Great Ormond Street Hospital for Sick Children; posts he held until 1998. He was instrumental in ensuring that the design of the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children included a genetic component.
With Jean Golding he has been closely involved in studies of intergenerational effects of environmental influences within ALSPAC, for which he was Director of Genetics until 2006. Marcus Pembrey – Wikipedia
Dr Matthew Suderman
Matt graduated from McGill University with a PhD in Computer Science in 2005. He then transitioned to Bioinformatics and eventually to Epigenetics. He was responsible for analysing some of the first genome-wide epigenetic profiles from a variety of cell types, tissues and model organisms to uncover associations with various exposures and disease states. These analyses suggested that epigenetic profiles from human peripheral tissues may be used to piece together accurate exposure histories to better predict later health outcomes. For the past several years he has been following up and confirming this hypothesis, developing and testing models of exposure and phenotype in epigenomic profiles generated in large human cohort studies, especially the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children. He is Senior Lecturer in Epigenetic Epidemiology at the University of Bristol. Dr Matthew Suderman – Our People (bristol.ac.uk)
Sarah Watkins
Sarah is a postdoctoral researcher working in epigenetic epidemiology. As a postgraduate she worked in clinical trials, histopathology, and evidence synthesis, with a focus on neurological conditions and mental health. She then transitioned to epigenetic research during her PhD at the University of Bristol, studying how relationships between DNA methylation sites relate to genome regulation. In her postdoctoral work, Sarah is interested in using epigenetic marks to investigate how our social environment might lead to biological changes that put people at greater risk of disease, and how this could be transmitted between generations. Miss Sarah Watkins – Our People (bristol.ac.uk)
Yasmin Iles-Caven
Yaz is Bristol born and bred and has worked at the University of Bristol since 1981. She has been involved in ALSPAC since its inception, mainly in an administrative role. She is now a researcher in her own right and has worked on the development of the non-genetic Inheritance grants.
As well as her involvement in many aspects of the documentation of the peer-reviewed papers, she also was involved in carrying out a more qualitative exercise (interviewing 100 participants about their ancestors). These structured interviews were recorded, and provide in-depth data concerning the early lives of grandparents and great grandparents, especially regarding early onset of smoking, life events and other stressors within these ancestors’ childhoods. Yaz, and colleague Karen Birmingham, felt very privileged meeting the participants and hearing about their ancestors’ early lives, some of which were quite traumatic. A key theme was the large families and grinding poverty in which many of them were raised, and these have been incorporated into a recently published paper (Birmingham, Iles-Caven & Golding, 2021). The stories provide a backdrop to the histories of thousands of ancestors of the ALSPAC study children. Yaz has a keen interest in local history and is attempting to trace her family tree! Mrs Yaz Iles-Caven – Our People (bristol.ac.uk)
Kate Northstone
Kate graduated with an MSc in Medical Statistics in 1995. She achieved a PhD by publication in 2008 in nutritional epidemiology. Kate has a number of research interests – past focus has been on nutrition, particularly looking at the diet as a whole through dietary patterns and has have published with experts in the fields of vision, asthma and allergy. She is developing her interest in the science of running, maintaining and collecting the best data from cohort studies.
Kate has worked with ALSPAC for over 24 years and her current role as Executive Director with responsibility for data places her in the perfect position to contribute a major role to this project. She manages the ALSPAC data team and as a member of the Executive is also involved in the strategic running of the study. She provides oversight of all data provision and subsequent statistical analyses in this project and ensures that all use of the data complies with existing ALSPAC policies and protocols. Kate contributes to the supervision of the Bristol-based research team by having a wide view of all the work occurring as part of this project and providing advice about the data and the methodologies employed. Dr Kate Northstone – Our People (bristol.ac.uk)
Steve Gregory
Steve is a data manager/statistician at the University of Bristol, where he has worked since 2001 in various admin and data roles. He gained extensive experience in cleaning, editing and analysing large data sets within ALSPAC. Much of his work now involves creating data files in preparation for statistical analyses, many of which he carries out in collaboration with senior academics and research collaborators. He has been closely involved in the recent analyses of transgenerational associations using exposome techniques with ALSPAC data. Mr Steve Gregory – Our People (bristol.ac.uk)