I am a vet and complex disease geneticist with extensive experience in breeding programmes, quantitative trait analysis, GWAS, functional genomics, epigenomics, metagenomics, molecular biology and systems biology approaches. Since 2005, I have been involved in multiple research projects aiming to dissect the genomic architecture of important animal diseases and zoonoses in poultry, ruminants and companion animals, enabling the identification of novel disease control strategies to enhance animal and human health and welfare as well as support the sustainability of the agricultural sector.

I am also very enthusiastic in supporting early career researchers (ECR), advancing women in science and contributing to a more equitable and diverse working environment in science.

I am a member of the RVC Equality and Diversity Committee, an Equality Champion, and member of the RVC Athena Swan working group. I am an AURORA ambassador and have attended the SEAL Action Learning programme. I am mentoring several ECRs and have run wet lab training and grant writing workshops to support ECR training in Africa and Asia. I regularly host in my lab visiting scientists from different parts of the world.

As a member of the BBSRC London Interdisciplinary Doctoral Training Partnership (LIDO) management committee, I have a strong interest in training the next generations of scientists.

I am also very enthusiastic in joining forces with other researchers to advance animal genetics research. Currently, I am a member of the Functional Annotation for Animal Genomes Consortium single cell sequencing task force, a member of the Houghton Trust, the UK representative in the permanent committee of the World Congress on Genetics Applied to Livestock Production conference, organiser of the poultry, small ruminants and companion animal ISAG workshops, a member of the pool of experts for BBSRC and EU expert evaluator.

Ankit Hinsu is working as postdoctoral fellow in the Psifidi lab group. His work focusses on poultry genetics, genomics, and transcriptomic data analysis and their association with zoonotic pathogens based on metagenomics and antimicrobial resistance data. He did his Bachelors and Masters in Technology in Biotechnology from Amity University, India and then completed PhD in Biotechnology from Saurashtra University, India. He has extensively worked on Next-generation sequencing platforms generating NGS data and their analysis. His interests lies in the fields of Metagenomics and Genomics.

ahinsu@rvc.ac.uk  Personal website  Google Scholar 

Charlotte is a first year iCase PhD student funded by the RVC and Holos Life Sciences. She completed her Bachelor in Agricultural Science- Equine Science from University College Dublin. Before going on to complete the European Masters in Animal Breeding and Genetics specialising in precise phenotypes and genomic selection. This masters took place at Wageningen University, The Netherlands and at the Norwegian University of Life Science (NMBU), Norway. There she carried out projects looking at genetic variability in recover rates from digital dermatitis in Dutch dairy cattle and fine mapping a QTL for white markings in Fjord horses. Her research interests include animal breeding, genomics and epigenetics. Currently she is working on a PhD looking at equine recurrent exertional rhabdomyolysis, using multi-omics approaches to further our understanding of this syndrome, how and why it occurs.

Gladys Maria Pangga is a PhD student in the RVC Psifidi Genomics group and a registered Doctoral student at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (LSHTM). She is an Industrial Cooperative Awards in Science and Technology (iCASE) student of the London Interdisciplinary Doctoral Program (LIDo), under the supervision of Dr Ozan Gundogdu (LSHTM), Dr Androniki Psifidi (RVC), and Dr Dong Xia (RVC), with Moy Park (Northern Ireland) as her industry sponsor (Dr Anne Richmond). Her project mainly examines the relationship between chicken genotype, farm performance and gut microbiota, and how this impacts zoonotic pathogen susceptibility and occurrence. 

Prior to her doctoral studies, Gladys received her MSc in Tropical Animal Health from the Institute of Tropical Medicine Antwerp in Belgium and her Masters in One Health from ONIRIS in Nantes, France, where she conducted studies on antimicrobial resistance of fish-borne pathogens and TB genotyping. She is also a registered veterinarian in the Philippines who was involved in molecular surveillance of economically important diseases of livestock. Her research interests include microbiome, metagenomics, metabolomics, infectious/zoonotic diseases, veterinary epidemiology, and food safety.

Email: Gladys-Maria.Pangga@lshtm.ac.uk, ucbtgmp@ucl.ac.uk 

Marili is a LIDo iCASE PhD student collaborating with Cobb Europe. Her project “Understanding the contribution of host genetics, intestinal structure and microbiome diversity to gut health in broiler chickens” focuses on understanding intestinal dysbiosis in broilers and using a multidisciplinary approach to identify early life biomarkers related to this condition. Her supervisory team includes Prof. Damer Blake (RVC) as primary supervisor, Dr. Androniki Psifidi (RVC), Dr. Dong Xia (RVC), Dr. Jonathan Williams (RVC), Dr. Devin Stuart (Cobb) and Dr. Rachel Hawken (Cobb). Before her doctoral studies, Marili obtained a BSc in Biochemistry and Biotechnology from the University of Thessaly, Greece, and an MSc in Molecular Biomedicine from the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens. During her previous experiences, she undertook projects focusing on various biological topics including epigenetics and antiviral responses in humans, immunology, lncRNAs in colon cancer and R-loop biology. Her research interests lie in the fields of genetics, -omics, microbiome, pathobiology, animal and human welfare. She is a philomath, and passionate about utilising her knowledge in order to understand and combat diseases.

Beth completed her BSc in Biomedical Science (Honours) at Anglia Ruskin in 2025. Her dissertation was titled “Isolating and Identifying bacterial samples from Stanbrough Lake and investigating their antibiotic resistance. This project introduced her to a love of genomics, as she was introduced to what genetic sequencing was and how it worked by the University of Cambridge, which collaborated in this project. Straight after finishing her BSc, she applied for a genomics-focused MRes degree at the Royal Veterinary College. Her current project is investigating the role of long-coding RNAs (lncRNA) in the immunological response to Newcastle Disease Virus (NDV) in chickens, where she will be analysing chicken samples using R coding and cluster, to name a few. After this, she aim to pursue a PhD at the RVC.
In her spare time, she enjoy crocheting, reading, knitting and ballet. 

Andrew is a master’s student in the Psifidi lab group.