Curriculum vitae

Seren Aitchison

Medicinal chemistry graduate working in computational biology, bioinformatics and machine learning. Choose an emphasis below, then print to PDF — the page is laid out for it.

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Seren Aitchison

Computational biology · bioinformatics · medicinal chemistry

serenaitchison.com · · github.com/seren-aitchison

Profile

Education

2022 – 2025

BSc Medicinal Chemistry — Cardiff University

Second Class Honours (Upper Division), 2:1

Dissertation (40 credits): Catalytic Synthesis and Characterisation of a Biobased Heterocyclic Scaffold with Medicinal Potential. Independent research covering catalytic synthesis from furfural, comparison of Amberlyst-26, γ-alumina and calcium oxide catalysts, analytical characterisation by TGA, TEM and GC, and molecular docking of the resulting scaffold.

Coursework: medicinal chemistry and molecular design · organic and inorganic chemistry · physical and analytical chemistry · molecular interactions · chemical characterisation · computational chemistry · biological and pharmaceutical principles

Research outputs

Independent computational analyses. Not peer reviewed. Each has a public write-up with stated methods and limitations; repositories marked private can be shared on request.

Software projects

Technical skills

Independent research proposals

Written independently; not undertaken and not supervised.

Writing

  • What a UMAP plot does and does not preserve — dimensionality reduction and the limits of visual interpretation
  • Why a docking score is not a binding affinity — scoring functions, rigid receptors and honest claims
  • Why genome-wide significance is 5 × 10⁻⁸ — multiple testing and reading a QQ plot
  • SHAP explains a model, not a mechanism — feature attribution and biological inference
  • The reference genome is a sample, not a truth — reference bias in variant calling, and who it affects
  • What a gene list is actually for — background sets, annotation bias and redundancy in enrichment testing

Interests and direction

Precision medicine and multi-omics integration; computational genomics and single-cell analysis; computational drug discovery and pharmacogenomics; interpretable machine learning for biological data; translational and spatial biology. Seeking doctoral research or a computational scientist position where chemistry and computation meet.