Melissa obtained her PhD in Molecular Genetics from the UCL Great Ormond Street Institute of Child Health in 2017, after completing her MSc in Clinical Neuroscience at the UCL Institute of Neurology. Her doctorate studies focused on understanding the molecular and functional bases of syndromic diabetes mellitus. She uncovered two novel genes in the AMPK pathway associated with a syndrome of early onset obesity, insulin resistance, type II diabetes mellitus and developmental delay. This data led to the award of the Sidra Medical Research Fund (Doha, Qatar) that enabled further study into this subset of monogenic diabetes syndromes under Professor Khalid Hussain. Melissa then joined Professor Veronica Kinsler’s lab as a post-doctoral research associate in 2018. Her current work  

in the Mosaicism and Precision Medicine lab at The Francis Crick Institute focuses on understanding the pathogenesis of rare keratinisation disorders as well as deciphering the phenomenon of genetic revertance in congenital melanocytic naevi.