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Although thought to be substantial, within-person variability in school grades has not been systematically studied. Here we analysed data from the Twins Early Development Study (TEDS; Nmax = 11,132) to describe within-person variability across grades in English, maths, and science from age 7 to 16 years. We found that within-person grade variability was largely unstable across subjects and ages. Within-person grade variability at age 16 was not associated with any of 15 variables that typically explain between-person differences in school performance (e.g. IQ, socioeconomic status, and personality traits). Also, within-person grade variability did not predict later educational outcomes at ages 18 and 21. Our findings suggest that within-person grade variability is an observable, but not meaningful psychological construct. We conclude that understanding the causes and consequences of within-person grade variability is of limited epistemological value.

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Adulthood has traditionally been defined by the attainment of socio-demographic milestones such as career, marriage, and parenthood. We sought to understand how contemporary adults define adulthood today, when these traditional milestones are often delayed or even out of reach. In a survey of 722 UK adults with an age range from 18 to 77 years, we found that adulthood was predominantly defined by psychological characteristics, for example “Accepting responsibility for the consequences of my actions” (endorsed by 80% of the sample), rather than by socio-demographic milestones (22-40% endorsement). We also found that holding positive attitudes towards adulthood was the strongest independent predictor of self-perceived adult status, independently accounting for 10% of the variance. Our findings suggest that fostering positive attitudes towards adulthood may constitute a pathway for improving mental health in contemporary adults.

Melanoma is a cancer of melanocytes, the cells responsible for pigment production in the body. While melanoma has one of the highest cure rates of any cancer when detected early, once melanoma has metastasized the chances of survival dramatically decrease. Fortunately, the approval of numerous targeted and immune-based therapies for metastatic melanoma have had a significant impact on patient survival in the past 8 years. An important catalyst of this therapeutic success has been our significant understanding of the biology and genetics of melanoma. Genomic platforms, including next-generation sequencing, have rapidly increased our knowledge into the diverse sub-types of melanoma. This has allowed us to extract meaningful diagnostic information for use in the clinical management of patients, given us insight into the potential causes of melanoma, and have helped us identify new drug targets. Despite this, drug-resistance, patients not responding to treatment, and unintended side effects are all issues that need to be resolved by the field. In this talk, I will provide an overview of the somatic genetics of melanoma and discuss its diagnostic relevance in context to the current landscape of therapies for late-stage disease. This will be followed by my recent research on understanding the role and potential mechanisms of transcriptional cell states in melanoma and its significance in up-front and acquired drug resistance. Lastly, I will provide an overview of my collaborative efforts with the Broad Institute of Harvard MIT to identify melanoma specific gene dependencies as novel drug targets through use of genome-wide CRISPRknockout screens.