About
A brief description of who you are and what you do.
This section will only display on your public profile if you’ve added content.
You can update this in Pure (opens in a new tab). Select ‘Edit profile’. Under the heading and then ‘Curriculum and research description’, select ‘Add profile information’. In the dropdown menu, select - ‘About’.
Write about yourself in the third person. Aim for 100 to 150 words covering the main points about who you are and what you currently do. Clear, simple language is best. You can include specialist or technical terms.
You’ll be able to add details about your research, publications, career and academic history to other sections of your staff profile.
Research
Your current research, published research topics, projects and groups.
This section will only display on your public profile if you’ve added content.
You can update the information for this section in Pure (opens in a new tab).
Research groups
Any research groups you belong to will automatically appear on your profile. Speak to your line manager if these are incorrect. Please do not raise a ticket in Ask HR.
Research interests
Add up to 5 research interests. The first 3 will appear in your staff profile next to your name. The full list will appear on your research page. Keep these brief and focus on the keywords people may use when searching for your work. Use a different line for each one.
In Pure (opens in a new tab), select ‘Edit profile’. Under the heading 'Curriculum and research description', select 'Add profile information'. In the dropdown menu, select 'Research interests: use separate lines'.
Current research
Update this in Pure (opens in a new tab). Select ‘Edit profile’ and then ‘Curriculum and research description - Current research’.
Describe your current research in 100 to 200 words. Write in the third person. Include broad key terms to help people discover your work, for example, “sustainability” or “fashion textiles”.
Research projects
Research Council funded projects will automatically appear here. The active project name is taken from the finance system.
Publications
Public outputs that list you as an author will appear here, once they’re validated by the ePrints Team. If you’re missing any outputs that you’ve added to Pure, they may be waiting for validation.
Supervision
A list of your current and past PhD students.
This section will only display on your public profile if content has been added.
Contact your Faculty Operating Service team to update PhD students you supervise and any you’ve previously supervised. Making this information available will help potential PhD applicants to find you.
Teaching
A short description of your teaching interests and responsibilities.
This section will only display on your public profile if you’ve added content.
You can update your teaching description in Pure (opens in a new tab). Select ‘Edit profile’. Under the heading and then ‘Curriculum and research description’ , select ‘Add profile information’. In the dropdown menu, select – ‘Teaching Interests’. Describe your teaching interests and your current responsibilities. Aim for 200 words maximum.
Courses and modules
Contact the Curriculum and Quality Assurance (CQA) team for your faculty to update this section.
External roles and responsibilities
These are the public-facing activities you’d like people to know about.
This section will only display on your public profile if you’ve added content.
You can update your external roles and responsibilities in Pure (opens in a new tab). Select ‘+ Add content’ and then ‘Activity’, your ‘Personal’ tab and then ‘Activities’. Choose which activities you want to show on your public profile.
You can hide activities from your public profile. Set the visibility as 'Backend' to only show this information within Pure, or 'Confidential' to make it visible only to you.
Biography
Deborah Mackay leads the Wessex Imprinting Group in a broad programme of research on human imprinting disorders, which are congenital disorders affecting the regulation of genes rather than their DNA sequence. Her group is delineating the genetic causes, epigenetic features and clinical consequences of imprinting disorders, with two aims: to understand the biology of imprinting, and to improve the lives of patients affected by these disorders.
The group identified the locus for the rare imprinting disorder transient neonatal diabetes (TND, characterised by severe growth restriction and infant diabetes), defined the DNA methylation anomaly that causes it, and developed robust testing for the disorder in affected neonates. In recent years she has studied further syndromes, including the overgrowth disorder Beckwith-Wiedemann syndrome (BWS), the growth restriction disorders Silver-Russell Syndrome (SRS) and Temple Syndrome (TS14), and the metabolic disorder Pseudohypoparathyroidism type 1b (PHP1b). Moreover, her group identified the archetypal ‘multi-locus imprinting disorder’ (MLID) in patients with DNA methylation problems affecting multiple imprinted genes throughout the genome. This has led to a fundamental redevelopment of the way we think about evolution of the epigenome in development. The group has developed informatic tools to delineate MLID in order to stratify patients and better understand the mechanisms and consequence of disease.
Dr Mackay’s group showed that mutations in ZFP57 are associated with a multi-locus methylation disorder, implicating ZFP57 in regulation of imprinting during early development. More recently the group has identified genetic changes in the mothers of individuals with MLID, which are associated with a wide range of reproductive outcomes in offspring. This work has suggested critical connections between epigenetic marks, maternal reproductive fitness and offspring development and health.
The research project “Imprinting disorders – finding out why” (IDFOW) is a pilot survey of DNA methylation anomalies in a UK-based patient cohort. With recruitment running at ~100 per year the study is showing that imprinting disorders are more common and more diverse than currently suspected. Her work supports genotype-phenotype correlation, improved diagnosis, and personalised clinical management. The group is also seeking novel genetic causes to help the families in IDFOW. Cis- and trans-acting DNA mutations and rearrangements have been found that disrupt epigenetic control of gene expression, causing growth and developmental anomalies; they are deploying exome and genome sequencing, as well as new next-generation sequencing approaches for epigenetics, to interpret these changes.
You can update your biography section in Pure (opens in a new tab). Select your ‘Personal’ tab then ‘Edit profile’. Under the heading, and ‘Curriculum and research description’, select ‘Add profile information’. In the dropdown menu, select - ‘Biography’. Aim for no more than 400 words.
This section will only appear if you enter the information into Pure (opens in a new tab).
Prizes
You can update this section in Pure (opens in a new tab). Select ‘+Add content’ and then ‘Prize’. using the ‘Prizes’ section.
You can choose to hide prizes from your public profile. Set the visibility as ‘Backend’ to only show this information within Pure, or ‘Confidential’ to make it visible only to you.