Throughout my education I have been fascinated by the complexity of the mechanisms that control our immune system. This led me to undertake my PhD training with Prof. David Sansom at UCL, where I gained a valuable understanding of the cell biology behind the control of T cell activation. During those years I realised that the processes that control immune reactions are highly variable and that understanding their genetic control could generate tremendous insight into the development of diseases. Motivated by this, I decided to research the genetic control of T cell activation. During my postdoctoral training in Dr Gosia Trynka’s group, I bridged functional immunology with genomic tools in order to take the next steps in understanding how genetic variants lead to complex immune diseases and how to identify new drug targets. I focused on generating large scale data on different immune cell types and states and developing statistical methods that enable the translation of genetic variants into immune functions.