Welcome to New Committee Members

The Genetics society welcomes two new committee members: Anita Hashmi (Shadow Postgraduate Representative) and Dr Natalia Bulgakova (Website Editor).

Anita is a second-year postgraduate researcher at Manchester Metropolitan University studying the genetics of African herbivores and the impact of conservation action on communities in Kenya.  Her research focuses on the practical application of genetics to resolve conservation issues alongside the influence of conservation strategies, such as the designation of national parks, on the lives of local communities.   Anita’s reasons for wanting to join the Genetics Society Committee were twofold: to continue the excellent work of the Society in public engagement and highlight diversity in our community of geneticists.  Through this position, she hopes to highlight and celebrate our differences as people and as researchers, especially within the postgraduate research community.

Natalia is a lecturer at the School of Biologies, University of Sheffield.  Natalia’s research focuses on cell-cell adhesion, which is the mechanism that connects individual cells in our body together.  She studies the regulation and roles of cell-cell adhesion during development and tissue homeostasis using Drosophila as a model. Natalia’s research greatly benefits from her passion for developing and applying computational approaches for analyses of data from microscopy and next-generation sequencing.  These approaches allow the extraction of quantitative, high-quality information to better understand the cellular and genetic mechanisms of animal development.  During her postdoc at the Gurdon Institute, University of Cambridge, UK, Natalia gained experience as a website editor, which she currently applies to her lab’s website.  She hopes to bring this expertise to help the Genetics Society to maintain an up-to-date inclusive world-wide-web presence.

Anita and Natalia are looking forward to being a part of the Genetics Society Committee.