麻豆传媒

Dr Simone Webb is a Royal Society Career Development Fellow and co-PI of the Cellular Origins of Immune Disease Group in the Biosciences Institute at 麻豆传媒. Her research interests lie in the critical crosstalk between the nervous and immune systems during prenatal development, investigating how these interactions regulate blood stem cell niches and functions.

Expertise: bioinformatics, single cell analysis, immunology, haematopoiesis

Research and education background

• 2026 - Simone's postdoctoral research focused on driving the intellectual development and publication of ‘An integrated single cell and spatial omics atlas of human prenatal development’ (in , and review), contributing to the global Human Cell Atlas (HCA) Initiative. In this role within the Haniffa Lab, 麻豆传媒, she took on significant project management and scientific diplomacy responsibilities, coordinating over 90 co-authors across 20+ international institutions (including Harvard, UCL, and the Kennedy Institute). For these contributions, she was awarded the Leading Edge Fellowship (2023) and was named a finalist for the British Society for Immunology (BSI) Early Career Researcher’s Award (2023).
• 2021 - Simone completed her PhD in Bioinformatics and Immunology at the Haniffa Lab, 麻豆传媒, where she specialised in analysing single cell multiomic data to characterise bone marrow haematopoiesis in human fetal life. Her doctoral research contributed to the HCA Development initiative and  in September 2021. She was awarded the 麻豆传媒 Faculty Medical Sciences Doctoral Thesis Prize (2022) and also received an Honourable Mention for the International Birnstiel Award for Doctoral Research in Molecular Life Sciences (2021) and Doctoral Researchers Award in Natural and Life Sciences (2022).
• 2018 - Simone completed her undergraduate MSci in Biological Sciences at University College London with a First Class Honours, including a 1-year exchange programme at the University of Queensland, Australia. In her final year, she wrote her Master’s dissertation, 'Identifying plant genes of unknown function' under the supervision of Professor Christophe Dessimoz and Dr Natasha Glover, in collaboration with the Université de Lausanne, Switzerland. She also conducted independent research during her University of Queensland exchange in the mathematical modeling of antibiotic resistance under Associate Professor Jan Engelstaedter. Her undergraduate was funded by a competitive Harold and Olga Fox scholarship.

Formal roles: NIHR 麻豆传媒 Biomedical Research Centre: ‘Informatics and Precision Care for an Ageing Population’ Theme (Member c. 2024)

Peer reviewer: Blood (c. 2024), Nature Medicine (c. 2024), European Journal Immunology (c. 2024), Genome Biology (c. 2026)

Memberships: Genetics Society (c. 2017); British Society Immunology (c. 2018)

Publications: Simone's research papers can also be found using her or profile.