Meet the Network Committee
The network is run by a committee of fellows who represent many of our major fellowship programmes. The committee set the direction of the network, organise the workshops, evaluate feedback and help connect our members.
Kalina Naidoo
Kalina is a neuronal cell biologist based at DPAG and her current project is a collaboration with GSK. In it, she is investigating the mitochondrial and lysosomal changes in primary fibroblasts derived from patients with Parkinson’s Disease (PD). She is especially passionate about PD from an African perspective.
Isar Nassiri
Isar is a Senior Spatial Transcriptomics Computational Biologist at the Oxford-GSK Institute of Molecular and Computational Medicine (IMCM) and the Centre for Human Genetics. His core responsibilities are target and biomarker discovery using spatial profiling in neurodegenerative diseases, specifically Parkinson's disease. Isar has expertise in Genetics (MSc), Bioinformatics (PhD), Computational Biology, Biostatistics and Machine Learning, and Bioinformatics and Statistical Genetics.
Nan Yang
Nan joined Kennedy Institute of Rheumatology (Nuffield Department of Orthopaedics, Rheumatology & Musculoskeletal Sciences) in January 2019, investigating Fibrosis and Tissue Regeneration in relation to Dupuytren’s disease. In March 2020, she began an Oxford-BMS Fellowship in the same group, focussing on liver fibrosis. Beyond the lab, Nan is a member of the Public Engagement Committee for the Society for Endocrinology.
Thomas Agbaedeng
Thomas is a Novo Nordisk Research Fellow at the Wellcome Centre for Human Genetics. In his position, Thomas is working at the interface of industry (Novo Nordisk company) and academia (Oxford) collaboration to use epigenetic fine mapping to identify new drug targets for atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease. Thomas was formerly a Grant-funded Researcher at The University of Adelaide. Thomas has a keen interest in commercialisation of innovative research and healthcare solutions. He is also very interested in increasing industry engagement and collaboration among early career scientists in academia
Nadia Fernandes
Nadia is based at the Kennedy Institute and uses spatial biology, single-cell genomics, and AI to investigate disease heterogeneity and treatment response in inflammatory bowel disease.Working with industry partners including Eli Lilly, her research aims to identify the biological mechanisms that distinguish responders from non-responders to therapy.
Rahul Arora
Rahul is a bioinformatician based at the CHG and has worked on the genomics of Parkinson's disease (PD) and Multiple System Atrophy (MSA), investigating the shared genetic risk loci between the two diseases and correlating them with clinical data. He has also investigated the Immunoglobulin interactions with plant pathogenesis-related proteins, during which he gained expertise in protein modelling and molecular docking, and has worked on iCLIP data analysis for Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS).