Jean-Baptiste Pingault, head of lab
Jean-Baptiste is a Professor of Developmental Psychopathology and Genetics at the Department of Clinical, Educational and Health Psychology (CEPH), University College London (UCL), as well as a visiting researcher at the Social, Genetic, and Developmental Psychiatry centre, King’s College London (KCL).
He is currently a MQ Transforming Mental Health Fellow. Prior to his arrival in London with a European Marie Curie Fellowship, he has done research in France, Brazil and Canada. More information at:
UCL profile
Twitter: @AtCMAP
Google scholar
Current lab members
Research Associates
Jessie Baldwin
Jessie is a Sir Henry Wellcome post-doctoral fellow at UCL and visiting researcher at the Social, Genetic and Developmental Psychiatry (SGDP) Centre at KCL. She completed her undergraduate degree in Psychology at the University of Warwick and master’s degree and PhD at the SGDP Centre, KCL. She then joined the CMAP Lab as a post-doctoral research associate working on an MQ-funded project on bullying victimisation and mental health. Her current research focuses on understanding the links between adverse childhood and mental health, using genetically informative designs and statistical methods to strengthen causal inference. She is also passionate about open science and is the UCL Local Network Lead for the UK Reproducibility Network and co-lead of the ReproducibiliTea journal club at UCL.
Email: j.baldwin@ucl.ac.uk
Twitter: @jessiebaldwin
Wikus Barkhuizen
Wikus is a Sir Henry Wellcome postdoctoral fellow at UCL. He obtained his BSc in Psychology at Birkbeck and an MSc at King’s College London in Early Intervention in Psychosis. Wikus completed his PhD at the Centre for Brain and Cognitive Development at Birkbeck on adolescent psychotic experiences such as paranoia, how these experiences overlap with mental illness, and its association with tobacco use. He has eight years of clinical experience in the addiction sector as a practitioner and manager at substance misuse treatment services in London.
Wikus joined UCL as a postdoctoral researcher in January 2020. In this post, his main research projects focussed on the aetiology and the intergenerational transmission of childhood ADHD. He obtained a Sir Henry Wellcome postdoctoral fellowship in 2022. For this fellowship, he employs genetically informed designs to investigate whether shared biological pathways and causal relationships may explain associations between health-related behaviours and mental health outcomes in children and young people.
Email: w.barkhuizen@ucl.ac.uk
Twitter: @WikusBarkhuizen
Andrea Allegrini
Andrea joined the lab as postdoctoral researcher after completing his PhD at the Social, Genetic and Developmental Psychiatry centre, King’s College London. During his PhD Andrea focused on the application of multivariate genetic methods to better understand the co-occurrence of complex phenotypes across child development.
His research interests span statistical genetics and developmental psychopathology. Currently, his work focuses on the intergenerational transmission of mental health problems leveraging genomic data and family-based designs.
Email: a.allegrini@ucl.ac.uk
Twitter: @AndreAllegrini
Abigail Ter Kuile
Abi joined the lab in April 2023 as a postdoctoral researcher in Psychiatric Genetics after completing her PhD in Statistical Genetics at the Social, Genetic and Developmental Psychiatry centre, King’s College London. During her PhD, she applied a range of genome-wide techniques to investigate the risk and treatment of anxiety and depressive disorders. Her work in the CMAP lab will include investigating the intergenerational transmission of educational attainment and risk for mental health problems. Additionally, she will explore the use of Mendelian randomisation techniques to repurpose and discover drug targets for the treatment of psychiatric disorders.
Email: a.kuile@ucl.ac.uk
Twitter: @Abiterkuile
José Morosoli
José is a research fellow at University College London, a visiting scientist at QIMR Berghofer and an honorary fellow at the University of Queensland (Australia). His research interests span behavioural genetics, social psychology and science communication.
During his PhD and first postdoctoral positions, José’s work focused on understanding public understanding of genetics and evaluating the utility of pharmacogenetic testing for antidepressants in Australia.
In 2023, José joined the C-Map laboratory to work on a European Research Council-funded project aiming to identify causal intergenerational pathways linking parental risk factors to child mental illness.
Email: j.morosoli@ucl.ac.uk
Twitter: @jjmorosoli
UCL profile
Nicole Creasey
Nicole is a postdoctoral researcher investigating the role of DNA methylation in the intergenerational transmission of mental health problems. She is interested in how genetics and early life experiences interact to shape the epigenome and influence both risk and resilience for mental health problems. She received a Bachelor’s degree in Psychological and Behavioural Sciences from the University of Cambridge and a Research Master’s degree in Developmental Psychology from Leiden University. Her doctoral work at the University of Amsterdam focused on understanding the effects of parental factors on children’s DNA methylation and how these effects can be mitigated through early intervention. She also worked with at-risk families as a parenting coach and co-led the implementation of the strengths-based Family Check-Up intervention in Amsterdam, the Netherlands.
Email: n.creasey@ucl.ac.uk
Twitter: @NicoleCreasey
PhD candidates
Tracy Odigie
Tracy graduated with a Masters Distinction in MBiol Biochemistry from the University of Portsmouth. She underwent her masters as a placement year based at St George’s Hospital London in the Genetics Department, working on the 100,000 Genomes Project. During her time there, Tracy was a Research Assistant on projects that focused on Cancer Genomics and the Molecular Profiling of Colorectal Cancer. She also has experience working as a Clinical Trial Coordinator at University College London Hospital on cancer trials.
In September 2020, Tracy started her jointly funded ESRC/BBSRC PhD Studentship at University College London, based within the CMAP Research Lab. Her PhD focuses on using genetically informed designs to understand the relationship between bullying victimisation and mental health outcomes in childhood and adolescence. She is supervised by Professor Jean-Baptiste Pingault, Dr Wikus Barkhuizen and Professor Praveetha Patalay.
Email: t.odigie@ucl.ac.uk
Twitter: @TracyOdg
Leonard Frach
Leonard joined the lab as a PhD student funded by the European Research Council (ERC). He graduated from Ruhr-University Bochum (RUB) in Germany, where he studied Psychology (BSc), including a research stay at the IoPPN (Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology & Neuroscience), King’s College London. Afterwards he finished the MSc Psychology, specialising in Cognitive Neuroscience at the RUB. Leonard has been working in the Department of Genetic Psychology at the RUB since his second year as an undergraduate student. For his undergraduate and MSc projects, he investigated epigenetic modifications in the association with childhood adversity and stress reactivity, and using genetics to predict the outcome of exposure-based psychotherapy in individuals with anxiety disorders, respectively.
For his PhD project at the C-MAP lab, supervised by Prof Jean-Baptiste Pingault and Prof Frank Dudbridge, he investigates intergenerational transmission of risk factors for externalising problems of the offspring.
Email: leonard.frach.20@ucl.ac.uk
Twitter: @LeoFrach
Giulia Piazza
Giulia is a PhD student carrying out a rotation project at the C-MAP lab. She joined the UCL-Wellcome 4-year PhD in Mental Health Science in September 2020 and previously completed an MSc in Cognitive Neuroscience at UCL and BA in Psychology and Philosophy at the University of Stirling, Scotland. Giulia has also worked as Research Assistant at the UCL Clinical Psychopharmacology Unit, as well as worked as undergraduate Research Assistant on neuroimaging and cross-cultural research projects. During her rotation, she will be using data from the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children (ALSPAC) to explore the influence of polygenic scores on psychopathology symptoms using network analysis.
Email: giulia.piazza.18@ucl.ac.uk
Twitter: @GiuliaPiazza15
Stephanie Sheir
Stephanie is a PhD student funded by the ESRC-BBSRC Soc-B CDT in Biosocial Research. Her interests are in psychiatric genetics, cognitive abilities, and individual differences. At CMAP, she researches causal inference and mental health outcomes, making particular use of Mendelian randomization (MR). In joining UCL and undertaking a rotation at CMAP, she changed fields from a background in policy, having previously worked in AI governance and empirical ethics.
Email: stephanie.sheir.23@ucl.ac.uk
Twitter: @StephanieSheir
Students
Elizabeth Orpwood
Elizabeth is a third year MSci Psychology student at UCL, conducting her third-year project in the CMAP lab on the influences of parental cognitive and non-cognitive skills on the mental health of offspring. She is interested in psychiatric genetics and the neurological mechanisms underlying clinical disorders and hope to develop this into a career in research in the future. She is currently completing a UCL Psychology Summer Scholarship project on the attentional difficulties of patients with Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) and stuttering, and she is hoping to continue research into ADHD in her final year and PhD projects.
Ayana Cant
Ayana is a third-year BSc Psychology student at UCL undertaking her third-year project investigating the genomic effects on stability and changes in psychiatric behaviours using data from the Millennium Cohort Study. Her interests are in the genetic aetiology underlying the pattern of child and adolescent psychiatric disorders. She works part-time as an assistant to a clinical psychologist where she works one-on-one with children experiencing neurodevelopmental or behavioural difficulties. She hopes to continue working in the field of psychiatric genetics and clinical psychology post-graduation.
Affiliates
Tabea Schoeler
Tabea has joined the lab as a postdoctoral researcher after completing her PhD at the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience (King’s College London). During her PhD, she examined the link between cannabis use and mental health outcomes. Her current research focuses on investigating risk factors and consequences of substance use, including cannabis use. In particular, she is keen to apply more stringent statistical methods such as quasi-experimental designs and genetically informed methods to elucidate and disentangle risk effects on mental health in large epidemiological datasets. More information at: