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Anna Smith

Anna Smith

Contact information


Anna.Smith@ndph.ox.ac.uk

Anna Smith

DPhil Student

Anna joined the Cancer Epidemiology Unit (CEU) in Oxford Population Health as a DPhil student in October 2025. She works under Dr. Joshua Atkins, studying structural variation and the non-coding genome in breast and prostate cancer. Her research explores how changes or rearrangements in non-coding regions of DNA may contribute to the development and progression of these cancers. She has been awarded a Department of Population Health Studentship to fund her studies.

Prior to her DPhil, Anna completed a BSc in Neuroscience at the University of Manchester, with an industrial placement year at Agilent Technologies, where she developed a strong interest in genomics and its applications to medicine.

She then went on to complete an MSc in Genomic Medicine (2023–2024) at the University of Oxford, her research project investigating LINE1 hypermethylation in cell-free DNA as a potential diagnostic biomarker for liver cancer.

She has also worked at UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) for a year (2024–2025) within the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC), where she performed data analysis to identify emerging research trends and priority areas, supporting strategic funding decisions and policy development.