Helen Spiers is a second year PhD Student based at the Social, Genetic and Developmental Psychiatry Centre of King's College London. The focus of Helen's PhD is to identify and characterise changes in DNA methylation associated with development and aging across multiple tissue types, and to relate these changes to the functional consequences they may have.
Helen developed an interest in epigenetics whilst studying Molecular and Cellular Biochemistry at Oxford University (2005 – 2009). After graduating in 2009 with an MBiochem Helen temporarily worked as a Medical Writer (2009 – 2011), and it was during this time she became particularly interested in the questions which the SGDP department seeks to address, namely, how nature and nurture interact to give rise to the wide variety of psychological phenotypes.