Janis graduated with a degree in Biology from the University of Salford, which included a year of research at the Medical Oncology Department at the Patterson Institute in Manchester. She took an International PhD Studentship at the Friedrich Miescher Institute in Switzerland working on the dysregulation of signalling pathways in cancer, using the fruit fly as a model for growth control in the laboratory of Professor George Thomas. This work was continued under Prof. Thomas at Genome Research Institute, Cincinnati, Ohio, when the laboratory moved there in 2004.
In 2007, Janis was awarded her PhD from the University of Basel, Switzerland, for her work on two novel candidate genes involved in cell signalling and growth control. These two genes just happened to be highly expressed in the brain, and studying them sparked Janis’s interest in neuroscience.
Janis joined the laboratory of Dr Stuart Pickering-Brown in 2008, and is working on several projects involving progranulin, a gene identified as involved in a form of frontotemporal dementia with familial linkage by Pickering-Brown and others (Baker et al. Nature 2006). Progranulin expression is increased in activated microglia in many neurodegenerative diseases including Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, motor neuron disease and Alzheimer’s disease.
In her spare time, Janis enjoys community outreach and science communication, and is co-organiser of the Greater Manchester Skeptics. This year she received the Manchester Leadership Award for Researchers, and was ‘Highly Commended’ at the University of Manchester Community Service and Volunteer of the Year Awards 2010.
