Person Overview

Chris Wallace is a Wellcome Trust Senior Research Fellow at the University of Cambridge and joined the MRC BSU as an honorary Programme Leader in February 2016. Prior to this, she held fellowships from the Wellcome Trust and the British Heart Foundation at other institutes in Cambridge and Queen Mary University of London, where she worked on various aspects of statistical genomics. Her focus is on the twin goals of using genomic analysis to make meaningful contributions to the understanding of human autoimmune disease and the development of statistical methodology to enable these contributions.

BSU Research Overview

Chris Wallace's research programme has three complementary aims. First, to develop the statistical tools needed to identify genetic associations with disease, then robustly and empirically link each genetic association with a gene, cell type, stimulatory condition and ultimately a biological pathway. Specifically, this requires methods for:

• horizontal integration of different layers of omics data
• mapping the variants which regulate gene expression
• "fine mapping" causal genetic variants from amongst associated variants in genetic association data, typically using sparse variable selection
• "fine mapping" regulatory contacts in 3D maps of folded DNA from technologies such as promoter capture Hi-C

While the methods are broadly applicable across a range of common complex diseases, Chris's second aim is to use the methods to understand the causes of autoimmune diseases, the links between different diseases, and identify pharmaceutical targets and opportunities for pharmaceutical re-purposing.  Finally, a third strand of research aims to build upon what we have learnt about mechanisms underlying to disease to make stronger inference about the relationship of omics biomarkers and treatment outcomes in childhood arthritis, in order to aid treatment decisions. For further details of my group's research, including papers and code, see chr1swallace.github.io.