I am a full-time laboratory manager at the Department of Pathology within the Faculty of Medicine & Surgery.
I hold a Bachelor Honours degree in Pharmacy from the University of Malta and a Master’s degree in Forensic Science from King’s College London. I completed my doctoral degree at the University of Malta researching the genetic landscape of the Maltese population and mitochondrial diseases. In addition, I hold a Certificate in Principles of Biobanking from the University of Luxembourg and Level 5 awards in Leadership and Management, Project Management and Communications in Organisations. I have also undertaken extensive training in Quality management and auditing and hold certificates in ISO9001:2015, ISO19011, ISO17025, ISO15189, ISO20387, ISO20186, ISO20166 as well as personal empowerment and leadership development and strategic problem solving.
Between 2020-2022, I was seconded to largest EU Health Research Infrastructure Biobanking and BioMolecular Research Infrastructure (BBMRI-ERIC) as Quality Manager responsible for managing the quality tasks of the H2020 teaming project ‘CY-Biobank’ together with the project team at the University of Cyprus. I previously managed EU funded projects at the University of Malta including RD-Connect (FP7) and ADOPT-ERIC (H2020) and setup and managed the University of Malta biobank between 2010-2019. I also worked at the WADA accredited Anti-Doping Science Centre for the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic games.
I won an award for best London Metropolitan Police project for my master’s degree research project about mRNA and DNA profiling of minute body fluid stains in 2009 and won the Joint Research Council (JRC) Malta Young Scientist Award in 2017 for biobank-led research in rare disease.