Since 2018, I have been a postdoctoral researcher at the Roslin Institute, University of Edinburgh, where I have developed a niche at the interface of prion strain biology, structural biochemistry and computational drug discovery.

Prion diseases—including Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD) in humans, bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) in cattle, scrapie in sheep and chronic wasting disease (CWD) in cervids—are rare but invariably fatal protein misfolding diseases (PMDs). They share mechanistic features with more common neurodegenerative disorders such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s diseases, but are uniquely infectious. Prions can spread efficiently within populations and, on occasion, across species, as seen during the UK BSE crisis of the late 20th century, where the consumption of contaminated beef gave rise to variant CJD in humans. Human-to-human transmission has also occurred through medical procedures and blood transfusions from asymptomatic donors, underscoring the public health significance of prion diseases—a challenge made more pressing by the absence of effective treatments.

My research employs ultrasensitive detection assays (RT-QuIC, PMCA) to address fundamental questions in prion biology—particularly the structural basis of strain adaptation—while also developing tools with direct translational impact, including ultrasensitive preclinical blood tests for BSE (Blood, 2024). I also contribute to two European research consortia, adapting RT-QuIC to model prion susceptibility in sheep and cervids, directly informing government breeding-for-resistance programmes.

I am now establishing my independent research programme, integrating ultrasensitive amplification assays with advanced in silico modelling to investigate prion structure and interactions at atomic resolution. This work has been supported by pump-priming funding and, more recently, a prestigious Edinburgh Career Development Scheme (ECDS) grant, which has strengthened my independence and provided a platform to expand my programme. Building on this, my goal is to lead an interdisciplinary research group that combines experimental and computational approaches to uncover the structural basis of prion strain adaptation. Ultimately, I aim to translate these insights into innovative therapeutic strategies for prion diseases and, more broadly, other PMDs such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s diseases.