Dr Danielle Whittaker

Biography

Danielle completed her undergraduate degree in Veterinary Medicine at the Royal Veterinary College, which included an intercalated degree in Pharmacology, in 2009. After a period of time in veterinary clinical practice, she was awarded a Wellcome Trust Integrated Training Fellowship in 2012. During her fellowship, Danielle spent time at King''s College London and the Royal Veterinary College working on a neuroscience research programme, investigating the role of a chromatin-remodelling factor in cerebellar development, and completing her PhD in 2015. She has published in the Journal of Clinical Investigation and American Journal of Medical Genetics, amongst others. In 2018 Danielle completed her clinical residency in veterinary neurology and neurosurgery at the RVC and is now a specialist in that area. Danielle’s current research focus is to investigate how mutations in a transcriptional regulator in human patients with delayed motor development; ataxia and intellectual disability affect brain development. More broadly, her research goal is to understand how defects in GABAergic fate specification in the developing cerebellum contribute to neurodevelopmental disorders.