Dr Nicholas Clifton

About me:

Dr Nicholas Clifton is a Senior Research Fellow at the University of Exeter Medical School funded by a Career Development Award from the Medical Research Council. He leads research focused on patterns of gene expression and their association with psychiatric disorders. He uses tissue- or cell-specific RNA sequencing and ribosome profiling to track expression dynamics across development and apply these data to questions about genetic risk through bioinformatics.

Dr Clifton has a background in Neuroscience, which he studied at the University of Nottingham before undertaking a Wellcome Trust Integrative Neuroscience PhD in the Neuroscience & Mental Health Research Institute at Cardiff University. He went on to take up an Early-Career Research Fellowship and a Research Fellowship at Cardiff before acquiring his Career Development Award.

Interests:

Dr Clifton studies how genetic risk factors for psychiatric disorders such as schizophrenia influence biological systems in the brain as it develops. The goal of his current research is to understand when and where locally translated synaptic genes contribute to susceptibility to schizophrenia.

Qualifications:

• Associate Fellow of the Higher Education Academy
• PhD Integrative Neuroscience, Cardiff University
• MSci Hons Neuroscience, University of Nottingham