Vanessa Burns

PhD student at the Wellcome Sanger Institute

Vanessa Burns is a Volunteer Writer at BioNews. She is a PhD candidate in Human Genetics at the Wellcome Sanger Institute, affiliated with the University of Cambridge. Vanessa previously obtained an MPhil in Genomic Medicine from the University of Cambridge, in addition to an MSc in Reproductive and Developmental Biology from Imperial College London. Her current work is focused on the use of saturation genome editing to clarify variant effect within developmental disorder genes. More specifically, this research hopes to inform the functional effect of variants in non-coding regions, as well as resolve variants of uncertain significance to aid clinical diagnosis.