University of Bristol

United Kingdomwww.bristol.ac.uk

Bristol is one of the most popular and successful universities in the UK and was ranked within the top 5% of universities in the world in the QS World University Rankings 2019. The MRC Integrative Epidemiology Unit (MRC IEU) at the university conducts some of the UK’s most advanced population health science research. The MRC IEU uses genetics, population data and experimental interventions to look for the underlying causes of chronic disease. MRC IEU exploits the latest advances in genetic and epigenetic technologies, developing new analysis methods to improve understanding of how our family background, behaviours and genes work together. It uses these to investigate how people develop and remain healthy or become ill. The MRC IEU also hosts the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children (ALSPAC), also known as the Children of the 90s, which is the most detailed study of its kind in the world.

Role in LongITools

The University of Bristol is leading work package 5, which will examine the effects of exposome trajectories on growth, adiposity, metabolic and cardiovascular health in adolescents and young adults. University of Bristol is also leading and contributing to tasks in other work packages.

Cohorts included: ALSPAC 

Professor Nic Timpson

Principal Investigator (PI) and WP5 Leader

During his time as a post doctoral researcher to the Wellcome Trust Centre for Human Genetics, Nic became involved in the first wave of genome wide association studies (GWAS) through the Wellcome Trust Case Control Consortium (type 2 diabetes (T2D) analysis team) and the initiation of a collection of collaborative consortia which continue to operate today. Nic is currently a Wellcome Trust Investigator (dissecting the routes between altered body composition/BMI and health outcomes), is the PI of ALSPAC and has work package/programme leadership roles in the MRC Integrative Epidemiology Unit, the CRUK Integrative Cancer Epidemiology Programme and the NIHR Bristol Biomedical Research Centre. He will lead work package 5 in LongITools.

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Dr Ahmed Elhakeem

Co-PI

Ahmed is a Senior Research Associate in Epidemiology. His research examines the effects of exposures from early life onwards on cardio-metabolic and musculoskeletal health over the life-course. He currently works on the EU Horizon2020 LifeCycle Project helping to set up the EU Child Cohort Network and to deliver a work package on early life stressors and cardio-metabolic health trajectories. He is establishing and leading a large collaboration of birth cohorts (AR-Health) to examine the effects of in vitro fertilisation on offspring life-course health. His role in LongITools is to co-lead work package 5.

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Ana Luiza Gonçalves Soares

Research Team

Ana is a Senior Research Associate in Epidemiology. Her main research interest is in exploring how adverse early life exposures affect life course health outcomes. Her work focuses on understating when and how adverse childhood experiences, such as childhood maltreatment, affects later-life adverse health outcomes, especially cardiometabolic and mental health.

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