Dr Alyson Ashe is a Senior Lecturer and Group Leader in the School of Life and Environmental Sciences at the University of Sydney.

Alyson completed her PhD in genetics and epigenetics with Prof Emma Whitelaw through the University of Sydney. She then completed a brief postdoctoral stint, also with Prof Whitelaw, at the Queensland Institute of Medical Research.

Alyson then completed an additional postdoctoral research period in the lab of Prof Eric Miska at the Gurdon Institute, Cambridge UK. Here she brought her love of epigenetics to a new model organism – the nematode worm Caenorhabditis elegans – and established a robust assay for studying transgenerational epigenetic inheritance (Ashe et al, Cell 2012). She also learnt all about the weird and wonderful world of small RNA molecules and dabbled in the anti-viral innate immune response (Plos Biology 2011 and eLife 2013).

With an ARC DECRA fellowship, Alyson moved back to the University of Sydney in 2014, where she established her own lab to study the molecular mechanisms by which epigenetic signals are passed between generations. The importance of her work has been subsequently recognised by an ARC Future Fellowship.

Alsyon was co-convenor of Epigenetics 2022.