Rachel Freathy MA, MSc, PhD

Rachel is a Sir Henry Dale Fellow at the University of Exeter Medical School. Her research aims to use genetics to understand the factors affecting the growth of a foetus in utero and its association with type 2 diabetes in adulthood.

A key feature of her work is to bring together data from large studies of mothers and babies. Rachel is leading genome-wide meta-analyses of birth weight in the Early Growth Genetics (EGG) Consortium, a worldwide collaboration of investigators. These analyses have resulted in publications in Nature (2016), and Nature Genetics (2010, 2013), identifying 60 common genetic variants that are robustly associated with birth weight and highlighting genetic links between fetal growth and adult cardiometabolic traits.