
Georgia Elizabeth Whitton
Junior Genomic Surveillance Data Analyst
Georgia is a junior data analyst currently working in the Covid-19 genomic surveillance project. Her interests surround using computational tools to help improve human health by furthering knowledge of disease.
I joined the Sanger Institute in October 2020 as a Junior Genomic Surveillance Data Analyst in the Parasites and Microbes department. I’m currently working in the data analytics group of the Covid-19 genomics surveillance project where I’m helping to combine genomic data with important metadata to help track the spread of Covid-19 through the UK.
Whilst studying for my bachelors at the University of East Anglia, I rapidly developed interest in genomics and the evolving technologies that will undoubtably change the way that we treat disease and improve human health. For my undergraduate thesis I joined the Haerty Group at the Earlham Institute where I developed bioinformatics pipelines to analyse short-read RNA-Seq data from human prefrontal cortex brain tissue to investigate the effects of alternative splicing on voltage gated calcium channel subunits. I was specifically interested in how changes in development and ageing effected the use of exonic segments, and in particularly incidences of schizophrenia.
Following on from the project I was selected for the Genes and Development Summer Studentship 2020 funded by the Genetics Society UK, where I continued to work in the Hearty Group at the Earlham Institute analysing Oxford Nanopore long-read RNA-Seq data to address alternative splicing in neuronal cell differentiation. With a multitude of psychiatric disorders and diseases attributable to mis-splicing it’s increasingly important to use long-read technologies for full transcript recovery to build more accurate transcriptomic annotations. After presenting my research at their virtual conference I was awarded second place.
My timeline
Started role as a Junior Data Analyst (Genomic Surveillance ) at the Wellcome Sanger Institute
Completed a Genetics Society Internship in bioinformatics at the Earlham Institute in the Haerty Group and in collaboration with Prof Elizabeth Tunbridge's Group at the University of Oxford
Graduated with first class honours from the University of East Anglia (UEA) with a BSc in Molecular Biology & GeneticsΒ
Started Undergradute Theisis at the Earlham Institute under the supervison of Dr Wilfried Haerty
Commenced Undergraduate Study at the University of East Anglia
Awarded a CertHE in Medical Science by the University of Buckingham