Christy Waterfall Head of Core Research Facility Operations
Christy is responsible for the operational aspects of Bath’s core research facilities.
Contact details
Christy Waterfall bspcmw@bath.ac.uk
Role
Christy works within the Research Infrastructure and Facilities department, responsible for the operational aspects of Bath’s core research facilities.
She oversees and supports instrument specialists in providing a world-class service to their customers, supporting and accelerating research, internally at Bath and externally at other HEIs and commercially.
Career
Christy completed her PhD in molecular biology at the University of Bath in 2003 and, following a post-doctoral research position in London, she embarked on a career within the biotechnology industry, starting at Applied Biosystems, training and supporting customers using real-time PCR for SNP genotyping and gene expression applications.
In 2006, she joined Illumina as the fifth field-based applications scientist covering all equipment installations and training across Europe, supporting customers in their scientific endeavours, and conducting training courses on microarray and next generation sequencing techniques.
Having won awards for customer service excellence every year as an applications scientist at Illumina, Christy progressed into a management position, supporting a small team of field-based Application Scientists and Engineers.
In 2012, Christy moved to a role at the University of Bristol, co-running a Genomics Facility service, specialising in next generation sequencing, alongside running her own business within the beauty industry. Christy contributed to expanding the services offered at Bristol, building awareness of multi-user facilities within academic institutions, and contributed to many successful grant applications and equipment bids.
In February 2024, Christy was delighted to join the newly centralised core research facilities at Bath, combining her management, scientific, and research facility experience to support the operations of a large team of instrument specialists delivering world-class professional services to their customers.
Education
Christy graduated from the University of Bristol in 1999 with a BSc (Hons) in Biochemistry with Medical Biochemistry. She left for one year to work in the Public Health Laboratory Service at the Bristol NHS hospitals, before embarking on a PhD in molecular biology at the University of Bath.
Following her PhD, she held a post-doctoral research position at the Queen Mary University of London, using PCR techniques to identify ovarian cancer susceptibility genes in a large-scale association study. Her specialist scientific techniques include next generation sequencing (all aspects from library preparation to data interpretation), microarrays for high throughput gene expression and genotyping, and real-time PCR.