A seminar featuring Dr. Nicky Whiffin from the University of Oxford will be hosted at the UCSF Mission Bay campus. Dr. Whiffin is an Associate Professor and co-lead of the Genomics research theme at the University of Oxford’s Big Data Institute, and a visiting scholar at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard. Her research centers on using computational approaches to accurately interpret the roles of genetic variants in rare diseases, with a particular focus on those that affect gene regulation.

Dr. Whiffin is a recognized expert in the annotation and interpretation of variants found in the non-coding regions of the genome, work for which she has developed clinical guidelines. The seminar provides an opportunity to learn directly from her recent research, which has earned her accolades such as a Lister Institute Research Prize and the 2025 Balfour Lecture from the UK Genetics Society.