Ella has a long-standing interest in mental health and improving current treatment and management of psychiatric disorders. Ella completed a BSc in Neuroscience at the University of Bristol (2017-2020) and has since enrolled in a Centre of Doctoral training in Biomedical Artificial Intelligence. Within this, she completed an MSc in Biomedical Artificial Intelligence, where she learned about the different ways artificial intelligence can be incorporated into health care and biomedical science. Her MSc project, co-supervised with Andrew McIntosh, focused on identifying proteomic differences within individuals who hold a higher genetic risk for Major Depressive Disorder (Depression).

During her PhD, she hopes to extend this work, using multi-omic measures such as epigenetics, proteomics, and metabolomics, to better understand the biological basis of depression. Furthermore, she aims to investigate the biology of differential antidepressant response (why do antidepressants work in some people, but not others?). Altogether, this work may contribute to a better understanding of biological underpinnings of depression, to help identify novel biomarkers for patient stratification and/or drug targets for the new treatments.

In her spare time, Ella could be found swimming in the sea, reading historical fiction, practicing yoga, or singing (badly).