I graduated from UEA with a degree in Computing Science in 2005 and was offered the opportunity to remain within the school to undertake a PhD. Under the supervision of Prof. Vincent Moulton, my research focused on new methods to construct Phylogenetic Networks which were intended to provide an explicit evolutionary history for species which had undergone allopolyploid hybridisation.

In addition to my main PhD studies, I developed a new version of VisRD which could be run on the command line so that large scale analysis could be performed using the UEA HPC facility. Upon completing my PhD studies in 2010, I was sucessful in obtaining a six month contract from the University of Cape Town to further develop RDP3 with Dr Darren Martin.

I then returned to UEA for 3 years as a research facilitator jointly appointed by the School of Biology and Computing Sciences. This role involved working with a number of researchers to provide support, in particular Bioinformatics, to their projects, with the aim of pump priming for grant funding. During this time, I provided particular expertise in MicroArray and Short RNA analysis using languages such as Java and R, and co-authored the associated publications.

During 2014/15 I conducted MicroArray analysis for Prof. Ian Clark, and members of his lab, as well as Dr Michael Wormstone, with whom I had previously collaborated.

In recent years I handled the technical side of a multi-million pound turnover eCommerce company and have also taken on a range of non-technical responsibilities as a director of that limited company. In particular, I set up and administered Apache Tomcat on a Linux system, ensured statutory documents were filed correctly, and in a timely manner, developed a business plan, and trained in leadership/management of staff. I presently volunteer to teach Python coding to children aged 8-18 at the bi-weekly StepIntoTech club in Norwich.

Key Publications

Sulforaphane can protect lens cells against oxidative stress: Implications for cataract prevention, H. Liu, A. Smith, M. Lott, Y. Bao, R. Bowater, J. Reddan, I. Wormstone, Investigative Opthalmology & Visual Science, 2013. https://doi.org/10.1167/iovs.13-11664

Activation of the innate immune response and interferon signalling in myotonic dystrophy type 1 and type 2 cataracts, J. Rhodes, M. Lott, S. Russell, V. Moulton, J. Sanderson, I. Wormstone and D. Broadway, Human Molecular Genetics, 21(4), 2012. https://doi.org/10.1093/hmg/ddr515

RDP3: a flexible and fast computer program for analyzing recombination, D. Martin, P. Lemey, M. Lott, V. Moulton, D. Posada and P. Lefeuvre, Bioinformatics, 26(19), 2010. https://doi.org/10.1093/bioinformatics/btq467

Inferring genome phylogenies for polyploids from multi-labeled gene trees, M. Lott, A. Spillner, K. Huber, A. Petri, B. Oxelman and V. Moulton, BMC Evolutionary Biology, 9(216), 2009. https://doi.org/10.1186/1471-2148-9-216

Identifying recombinants in human and primate immunodeficiency virus sequence alignments using quartet scanning, P. Lemey, M. Lott, D. Martin and V. Moulton, BMC Bioinformatics, 10(126), 2009. https://doi.org/10.1186/1471-2105-10-126