Francesca is a Scientific Officer within the Department of Applied Biomedical Science, where she has continued to pursue her research interests in the analysis of high-throughput sequencing (HTS) data for various complex and rare genetic disorders as a core research team member of the Malta Next Generation Sequencing (NGS) Project, a project which aims to elucidate the underlying genetics of complex and rare diseases found on the Maltese population through the use of HTS.
Currently, Francesca is actively involved in the TargetMI project, an EU funded EIC Pathfinder project aimed at developing new treatments and preventative measures for coronary heart disease and its consequences. She previously contributed to the MCST-funded TargetID project which sought to identify genes that can influence COVID-19 severity and find suitable drug targets to mitigate the severe effects of COVID-19.
Francesca graduated with a B.Sc. (Hons) in Applied Biomedical Science from the University of Malta in 2014. Her undergraduate research, which formed part of the MAMI Study, focused on the risk of myocardial infarction associated with the Coagulation Factor II G20210A polymorphism in combination with major cardiovascular risk factors.
In recent years Francesca has focused on developing her skills in HTS bioinformatics and has attended several courses, workshops, and traineeships on bioinformatics analyses. She first gained experience of bioinformatics whilst analysing large biological data sets as part of her M.Sc (by research) in Applied Biomedical Science, completed in 2016, and as a research support officer (RSOII) for the Horizon 2020 Twinning project TrainMALTA. Her postgraduate research project, which formed part of the Malta NGS Project, involved the application of HTS to identify candidate genes in neurodevelopmental disorders.
Francesca is also a PhD candidate whose ongoing doctoral research project forms a branch of the Malta NGS Project that focuses on identifying candidate genes and potential drug targets for the complex disease pseudoexfoliative glaucoma through the application and analysis of HTS and multi-omics data.
Her ongoing research interests include the genetics and genomics of neurodevelopmental disorders and complex diseases, including Autism Spectrum Disorders, Specific Language Impairment, and Pseudoexfoliative Glaucoma.
