Deepti Gurdasani | |
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Alma mater | University of Cambridge Christian Medical College Vellore |
Scientific career | |
Institutions | Queen Mary University of London Wellcome Sanger Institute |
Thesis | Design strategies in the study of genetics of complex disease in diverse populations. (2014) |
Website | www |
Deepti Gurdasani is a British-Indian clinical epidemiologist and statistical geneticist who is a senior lecturer in machine learning at the Queen Mary University of London. [1] Her research considers the genetic diversity of African Populations. Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, Gurdasani has provided the public with her analysis of the evolving situation mainly on the Twitter platform.
Gurdasani was an undergraduate student at the Christian Medical College Vellore, where she studied medicine. After earning her medical degree she moved to the United Kingdom, where she worked toward a doctorate at the University of Cambridge. Her doctoral research involved the design of strategies to understand complex diseases in diverse populations. [2]
In 2013, Gurdasani joined the Wellcome Sanger Institute as a postdoctoral fellow, [3] [4] where she worked on the genomic diversity of African populations and how this diversity impacts susceptibility to disease. She makes use of dense genotypes and whole genome sequences to better understand how population movements determined genetic structure. In particular, Gurdasani develops machine learning algorithms to large-scale clinical data sets. [5] At the Sanger Gurdasani co-led the African Genome Variation Project and the Uganda Resource Project. [5]
Gurdasani moved to Queen Mary University of London in 2019, where she created deep learning approaches for clinical prediction and the identification of novel, genome-based drug targets. During the COVID-19 pandemic Gurdasani has provided public commentary on the pandemic, making use of both Twitter and print media to share information on the evolving situation. [1] She has researched the incidence of long covid in the UK. [6] In 2021 Gurdasani started to write for The Guardian . [1]
The Wellcome Trust is a charitable foundation focused on health research based in London, United Kingdom. It was established in 1936 with legacies from the pharmaceutical magnate Henry Wellcome to fund research to improve human and animal health. The aim of the Trust is to "support science to solve the urgent health challenges facing everyone." It had a financial endowment of £29.1 billion in 2020, making it the fourth wealthiest charitable foundation in the world. In 2012, the Wellcome Trust was described by the Financial Times as the United Kingdom's largest provider of non-governmental funding for scientific research, and one of the largest providers in the world. According to their annual report, the Wellcome Trust spent GBP £1.1 billion on charitable activities across their 2019/2020 financial year. According to the OECD, the Wellcome Trust's financing for 2019 development increased by 22% to US$327 million.
The Wellcome Sanger Institute, previously known as The Sanger Centre and Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute, is a non-profit British genomics and genetics research institute, primarily funded by the Wellcome Trust.
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