Maria Niarchou

The goals of my research are to better understand the aetiological mechanisms underlying risk of major neuropsychiatric disorders. I am especially interested in the role of structural genomic abnormalities in the development of cognitive and psychiatric problems in children and adolescents.

Following a degree in psychology at the University of Athens in Greece, an MSc in Neuropsychology at the University of Bristol and a PhD at the MRC Centre for Neuropsychiatric Genetics and Genomics at Cardiff University, I was awarded a Sir Henry Wellcome Post-doctoral Fellowship.

The aims of my 4- year fellowship project (2016-2020) are to examine whether and how neurodevelopmental deficits and measures of genetic risk contribute to the development of schizophrenia in 22q11.2 Deletion Syndrome (22q11.2DS). I am using data from the International Brain and Behavior Consortium (IBBC), a single database with a wealth of phenotypic information on ~1,000 individuals with 22q11.2DS, providing a unique resource in the world. My supervisors during this fellowship are Professor Anita Thapar (Cardiff University, UK), Professor Naomi Wray (University of Queensland, Australia) and Professor Raquel Gur (University of Pennsylvania, USA).