
Professor Louise Wain
Genetic Epidemiologist at the University of Leicester, Chair of Respiratory Research at the British Lung Foundation
Speaker's biography
Louise Wain was appointed in 2017 as a GSK/British Lung Foundation Chair of Respiratory Research and is a member of the Genetic Epidemiology group at the University of Leicester. She has research interests in the genetic architecture of respiratory health and disease, focusing on pulmonary fibrosis and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. Her areas of expertise include the analysis of single nucleotide polymorphisms and copy number variation (CNV) using array data and re-sequencing approaches. Louise has played a key role in large consortium projects including SpiroMeta (lung function), the International Consortium for Blood Pressure (ICBP) GWAS and has led the largest GWAS of IPF susceptibility to date. Louise was a co-lead of the UK BiLEVE study - the first genetic study in UK Biobank - and is an active researcher working on pulmonary fibrosis in the Genomics England 100,000 Genomes Project. Louise is an Associate Editor for the European Respiratory Journal and, in addition to teaching at undergraduate and Masters level, leads doctoral training programme activities at the University of Leicester. She is currently one of the lead investigators of the new Post-Hospitalisation COVID-19 (PHOSP-COVID) Study and co-investigator of the largest UK study of post-COVID ILD.