Chay Paterson

Chay Paterson

Postdoctoral Research Associate / Mathematical Biologist

University of Manchester

I am an applied mathematician studying the timing and effect of mutations during cancer evolution. I want to figure out what happens to push benign tumours over the line to become malignant (cancerous). It is very difficult to figure out when this happens – usually we only have a late snapshot of cancer. I am taking a “bottom-up” approach using mathematical models of the underlying mechanisms, and focussing on pre-cancerous conditions and benign tumours so we can build a “before” and “after” picture. Two very important types of damage are copy number alterations and chromosomal aberrations – large chunks of the genome can be messed up at once. I am studying applications of machine learning and branching process theory to copy number alterations and genomic data.

Interests

  • Copy number alterations
  • Cancer epidemiology and risk factors
  • Mutational mechanisms

Education

  • Ph.D., 2017

    University of Edinburgh

  • M.Phys., 2013

    University of Exeter

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