Meet our 2022 recipient of one of Canada’s most prestigious postdoctoral awards, exemplifying world-class research capacity at an internationally competitive level of funding.
Allison Ann Dillott, Neurology and Neurosurgery
Leveraging large-scale sequencing to identify and validate genetic influences of movement disorders
Allison is a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Neurology and Neurosurgery at McGill University, working with Dr. Sali Farhan and Dr. Guy Rouleau. Here, she is leveraging large-scale sequencing datasets, additional ‘-omics’ data types, and rigorous statistical approaches to identify and validate novel genetic signatures of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), among other neurological conditions, such as essential tremor. She aims to identify genetic risk factors that may direct attention towards novel molecular targets involved in disease pathways. Allison completed her Ph.D. at Western University, where her doctoral work contributed to a province-wide, multi-discipline study, the Ontario Neurodegenerative Disease Research Initiative (ONDRI). Within the consortium, Allison was the lead analyst for ONDRI’s genomics platform, investigating the genetic landscape of neurodegenerative diseases and cerebrovascular disease. She has also contributed to projects identifying the genetic determinants of rare diseases and lipid disorders.