UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE - Key Persons
Job Titles:
- Research Grant Administrator
- Research Grants Administrator
Job Titles:
- Bioinformatics Research Associate
Job Titles:
- Executive Assistant
- Executive Assistant to Director
Anne ran a small research group at the Institute at the end of an illustrious and influential career in the science of mammalian reproduction, during which she was also a champion for women in science. Read a short biography, and learn about the seminars and meetings held in Anne's name, and the funded fellowships for young researchers.
Job Titles:
- Cancer Research Foundation Postdoctoral Fellowship
Job Titles:
- Group Leader
- CRUK - RadNet Group Leader, Member of the University Department of Pathology
I did my PhD in Immunology at the Spanish National Centre for Biotechnology (CNB-Madrid), where I studied the role of the proto-oncogene c-myc and its partner max in the development and maturation of B-lymphocytes in vivo.
In 2013 I started a postdoctoral position in the laboratory of Prof. Philip H. Jones (MRC-Cancer Unit / University of Cambridge and The Sanger Institute), funded by European Radiation Agency, where I developed a profound knowledge of epithelial tissue architecture, cell behaviour, radiation biology and cancer development. I studied how epithelial progenitor cells respond to environmental factors like low doses of ionising radiation and how this affects clonal competition within healthy tissues. I demonstrated that these exposures promote the expansion of oncogenic mutations in the oesophageal epithelium. I also demonstrated for the first time how to interfere with this process and deplete mutant cells by manipulating redox status, which opens a new field of study for future interventions in humans in order to reduce cancer risk.
In collaboration with colleagues from the Wellcome Sanger Institute and Wellcome-MRC Cambridge Stem Cell Institute, I developed and optimized a new model of in vitro long-term and self-maintaining 3D primary culture using mouse and human epithelial tissues. This system affords a novel concept in the field and allows long-term studies on tissue regeneration, cell-to-cell dynamic interactions, drug responses as well as monitoring early steps of tumour development in vitro.
I started my own laboratory, funded by CRUK-RadNet, at The Gurdon Institute in 2020. Our aim is to understand how radiotherapy treatments (among other environmental factors), modulate cell competition mechanisms in different epithelia, by introducing new selective pressures that change the mutational landscape and might affect tissue function and promote carcinogenesis.
Job Titles:
- Deputy Administration & Operations Manager / Principal Technician
Job Titles:
- Senior Research Associate
Job Titles:
- Head of Sequencing & Scientific Computing
- Scientific Computing Manager
- Sequencing and Scientific Computing Manager
Charles's undergraduate degree was in Biochemistry at the University of Sussex, after which he completed an MSc in Bioinformatics at the University of Exeter followed by a PhD at the Max Planck Institute of Cell Biology and Genetics in Dresden, Germany. His thesis covered detecting weakly conserved functional domains and gaining novel insights into genome-wide screens in humans and C. elegans.
Charles joined the Gurdon in 2010 running the Bioinformatics Core. In this period he worked with almost all the 17 research groups in the institute and was an author on over 20 publications. He also established the High Performance Compute facilities in the institute. In 2017 his role diverged into Scientific Computing as the High Performance Compute grew with more than 100 users and became an established facility for the institute.
Charles has collaborated with the ARC in Cambridge on Autism Genetics. This work was published in 2022 in Molecular Psychiatry.
In 2022 Charles also became the manager of the Sequencing facility, using his established knowledge and experience with Illumina and Oxford Nanopore sequencing to run the facility and its NovaSeq 6000.
The Institute has an Illumina NovaSeq 6000 Sequencer, which is available to researchers both in the Institute and the wider University. This sequencer is managed by Charles and is run by Kay Harnish.
Charles also assists with all scientific users of computing within the Institute. This includes managing the Institute's High Performance Compute cluster (1,216 cores and 1.5PB of storage) and scientific virtual machine cluster along with smaller optimised platforms for use within the building. Systems range from dedicated rack mounted servers to Raspberry Pis with bespoke electronics and software. This support allows scientists to work on their research, knowing that they have optimal compute resources.
Charles has extensive experience in scientific data management, having managed the Institute's high throughput sequencing data since 2010.
Job Titles:
- Senior Research Associate
- Wellcome Senior Research Associate
Job Titles:
- Senior Group Leader
- Senior Group Leader / Research
- Senior Non - Clinical Fellow, Member
Emma Rawlins obtained her PhD in developmental biology from the University of Edinburgh in 2002. She performed postdoctoral work with Prof Brigid Hogan at Duke University in 2004-2009 where she identified stem cell populations in the developing, homeostatic and repairing mouse lungs.
In 2009 she started her lab at the Gurdon Institute, University of Cambridge and in 2020 was promoted to senior Group Leader. Emma is a member of the Department of Physiology, Development and Neuroscience. Her lab works on lung stem and progenitor cell biology, combining innovative human organoid models with mouse genetics.
Job Titles:
- Senior Research Associate
- Wellcome Senior Research Associate
Job Titles:
- Senior Research Associate
Job Titles:
- Public Engagement Manager
- Research Associate / Public Engagement Manager
Hélène leads the public engagement strategy and manages projects that connect people and creates bridges between science and society. She is also a researcher, carrying out research on development biology at the Institute.
Job Titles:
- Group Leader
- Group Leader / Research
- Group Leader, Wellcome Trust Senior Research Fellow, Associate Professor in the University Department of Biochemistry
Jenny grew up in Bristol, UK and studied Molecular and Cellular Biochemistry at Trinity College, University of Oxford where she was awarded the Titley Exhibition and graduated with First Class Honours in 2001. She gained a Medical Research Council Pre-doctoral Fellowship to undertake her PhD at the Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge, where she discovered how BAR domain proteins generate membrane curvature with Dr Harvey McMahon and Dr Phil Evans, for which she was awarded the Max Perutz student prize.
Gaining an EMBO fellowship in 2006, Jenny moved field towards cell biology and development, starting her work on the actin cytoskeleton using Xenopus as a model system in her postdoc with Professor Marc Kirschner at Harvard Medical School. Dr Gallop returned to the UK in 2011 to set up her lab at the Gurdon Institute with a Wellcome Trust Career Development Fellowship and an ERC Starting Grant in 2012.
Her work is highly interdisciplinary, incorporating biochemical mechanism, advanced in vivo and in vitro imaging, quantification and disease models to understand the mechanisms of filopodia formation and actin regulation by phosphoinositide lipids. She has translated her discoveries into rare disease and was appointed to the Medical and Scientific Advisory boards of the Lowe Syndrome Association and Dent Disease Foundation in 2021 in recognition of her contributions to mechanistic understanding and drug repurposing.
Job Titles:
- Lab Manager
- Research Associate
Job Titles:
- Lab Manager
- Research Assistant
Job Titles:
- Senior Communications Coordinator
Job Titles:
- Stores / Purchasing Manager
Job Titles:
- Trust / Wellcome Trust ISSF / University of Cambridge Joint Research Grants Scheme
Job Titles:
- Group Leader
- Group Leader, Member of the University Department of Biochemistry
Originally from Bulgaria, Iva moved to the UK to study Biotechnology at the University of Edinburgh. She then joined the laboratory of Prof. Paul Lehner at the Cambridge Institute for Medical Research at the University of Cambridge, as part of the Wellcome Trust Infection and Immunity 4-year PhD programme. There, she performed a series of haploid gene-trap mutagenesis and CRISPR/Cas9-mediated forward genetic screens which identified a novel epigenetic repressor complex, HUSH, as the key mediator of position-effect variegation in human cells.
In 2016, Iva joined the laboratory of Dr Robert Kingston at Massachusetts General Hospital/Harvard Medical School as a fellow of the Damon Runyon Cancer Research Foundation. There, she leveraged her experience with genetic technologies to develop a genome-wide method to study chromatin accessibility (DIVA), as well as an unbiased method that allows for the identification of fluorescent, cell-based reporters of chromatin states (TRACE). Dr Tchasovnikarova joined the Gurdon Institute as a Group Leader in 2020.
Job Titles:
- Accounts Assistant
- Finance
Job Titles:
- Lab Manager
- Research Assistant
Job Titles:
- Distinguished Group Leader / Nuclear Reprogramming by Oocytes and Eggs
- Distinguished Group Leader / Research
- Professor Sir John Gurdon Kt DPhil DSc FRS / Distinguished Group Leader
Professor Sir John Gurdon Kt DPhil DSc FRS
Distinguished Group Leader, Nobel Laureate in Physiology or Medicine 2012, Member of the University Department of Zoology
Job Titles:
- Senior Research Lab Technician
- Senior Research Technician
My official role as Senior Research Technician is to assist the St Johnston lab in making transgenic flies. This mostly involves ‘fly whispering' to ensure there are enough correctly staged embryos and the subsequent microinjection of either DNA or RNA. In addition to my main job, I also provide advice to the lab on entomology, cars, photography and all things motor racing! Last but not least, the most important aspect of my job is to always be available for tea with struggling PhD students!
Job Titles:
- Associate
- Group Leader
- Associate Group Leader / Research
Jonathan arrived in 1995 for a three-year postdoc with Tony Kouzarides, and went on to become a hugely successful serial entrepreneur and investor in UK life-science and high-tech start-ups. It was a formative time in the Kouzarides lab as this was when he identified the market opportunity for supplying high-quality antibodies to support protein interaction studies, and in 1998 founded Abcam with Tony and with David Cleevely.
In 2015 Jonathan and Tony co-founded the Milner Therapeutics Institute.
Job Titles:
- Senior Research Assistant
Job Titles:
- Media / Glasswashing Technician
Job Titles:
- Research Associate ( Sequencing )
Job Titles:
- Media / Glasswashing Technician
Job Titles:
- Events Coordinator
- Lab Administrator
Job Titles:
- Associate
- Group Leader
- Associate Group Leader / Research
Professor Martin Howard DPhil, Associate Group Leader; Group Leader and Head of Department, Computational and Systems Biology, John Innes Centre
Martin Howard originally trained as a theoretical physicist, receiving his DPhil in 1996 from Oxford University. As a postdoc in Copenhagen, Vancouver and Leiden he then worked for several years on statistical physics. His interests then shifted towards biology and its interface with physics.
Following the award of a Royal Society University Research Fellowship, Martin moved to the Department of Mathematics, Imperial College London, where he stayed for nearly 5 years as a lecturer and then reader. In 2007, he moved to the Department of Computational and Systems Biology at the John Innes Centre as a professor and in 2020 was made an honorary group leader at the Babraham Institute, Cambridge.
In the past he has worked on topics as diverse as cell size control, cell division positioning and metabolic resource allocation. A central focus of his current research is the mechanistic basis of epigenetic memory, fusing simple mathematical models with quantitative experimental data, where he has forged long-lasting collaborations with experimental colleagues. He has focused particularly on understanding Polycomb-based switching and memory, but also memory in the context of DNA methylation dynamics.
Job Titles:
- Student / Research Assistant
Former group leader Meri Huch won multiple prizes for her work on organoids, including the NC3Rs International Prize, The Hamdan Award for Medical Research Excellence and the BINDER Innovation Prize. Meri proved that liver tumouroids in vitro could recapitulate the patient-specific progression of a liver tumour, which could provide a platform to experiment with personalised anti-cancer therapeutic regimens in vitro. She continues her research now as Lise Meitner Max Planck Research Group Leader at the MPI-CBG in Dresden, Germany.
Job Titles:
- Administrator
- Personal Assistant
Job Titles:
- Media / Glasswashing Technician
Job Titles:
- HDBI Public Engagement Manager
Job Titles:
- Public Engagement Coordinator
With a background in developmental biology, Nicola Lawrence has extensive experience of experimental design, sample preparation and image acquisition using a wide variety of light microscopy techniques.
Job Titles:
- Computer Officer ( Data Management and Infrastructure )
Job Titles:
- Head of Institute 's Wellcome
- Head of Wellcome Laboratories
- Head of Wellcome Laboratories / Research
Head of Institute's Wellcome laboratories, Wellcome Senior Investigator, Herchel Smith Professor of Molecular Biology, Royal Society Darwin Trust Research Professor, Member of the University Department of Physiology, Development and Neuroscience
Job Titles:
- Director of Germline and Epigenetics Research
- Director of Germline and Epigenetics Research / Research
- Director of Germline and Epigenetics Research, Wellcome Senior Investigator, Member of the University Department of Physiology, Development and Neuroscience
The discovery of genomic imprinting in 1984 by Surani was important for advances in mammalian development and the field of epigenetics. Mammalian genomes show epigenetic symmetry in totipotent zygotes because the chromosomes retain a memory of their parental origin with heritable DNA methylation tags, which regulate monoallelic expression of parental alleles of ‘imprinted' genes. These genes have a role in mammalian development, growth, and behaviour; aberrant imprints underlie some human diseases.
Notably, Surani also elucidated the genetic basis for mammalian primordial germ cell specification in mice and humans, which initiates the unique mammalian germline epigenetic program, including erasure and reestablishment of parental imprints. His continuing research is on early human development, the origin of germ cells during gastrulation, and epigenetic inheritance.
Surani was born in Kenya and received a PhD at Cambridge University under Sir Robert Edwards (Nobel laureate, 2010) in 1975, and was elected as Marshall-Walton Professor in 1992, and then as Director of Germline and Epigenetics Research in 2013 at the Gurdon Institute.
He is a Fellow of the Royal Society and the Academy of Medical Sciences. His awards include the William Bate Hardy Prize, a Royal Medal for mammalian development, Rosenstiel Award for epigenetic regulation of gene expression in mammalian embryos, ISSCR McEwen Award for Innovation, and the Canada Gairdner International Award for genomic imprinting and epigenetics.
Job Titles:
- Director
- Director / Research
- Director, Royal Society EP Abraham
Director, Royal Society EP Abraham Professor, Herchel Smith Professor of Physics, Affiliate of the University Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics
Job Titles:
- Group Leader
- Senior Group Leader
- Senior Group Leader / Research
I am a Wellcome Principal Research Fellow and Professor of Developmental Genetics at the University of Cambridge. My primary research is focused on cell polarity and body axis formation during development using Drosophila and intestinal organoids. Currently, I am focused on using localization based methods to better understand the distribution of polarity proteins.
Job Titles:
- Associate
- Group Leader
- Associate Group Leader / Research
Associate Group Leader; Head of Department of Biochemistry; Wellcome Senior Investigator, Cancer Research UK Senior Research Fellow, Herchel Smith Professor of Molecular Genetics, Associate Faculty Member of the Wellcome Sanger Institute
Job Titles:
- Associate Group Leader / Maintenance of Genome Stability
- Associate Group Leader / Research
- Senior Group Leader at Cancer Research UK Cambridge Institute
Senior Group Leader at Cancer Research UK Cambridge Institute; Frederick James Quick Professor of Biology and Member of the Department of Biochemistry, University of Cambridge
Job Titles:
- Co - Founder and Director of the Milner Therapeutics Institute
- Co - Founder and Ex - Director of Abcam Plc
- Professor of Cancer Biology, Cancer Research UK Gibb Fellow, Director of the Milner Therapeutics Institute, Member of the University Department of Pathology
- Senior Group Leader
- Senior Group Leader / Research
The Kouzarides lab has been studying epigenetic modifications for many years, starting with the identification of the first human enzymes to modify chromatin in 1996. His lab has identified and characterised many chromatin modification pathways and showed their involvement in cancer. The lab is now investigating the functions of mRNA modifications and their connections to cancer. In close collaboration with STORM Therapeutics, the Kouzarides lab is targeting RNA modification pathways with small molecule inhibitors, to develop drugs against cancer.
In the 22-year period of 1996-2017, Tony was listed in the top ten most-cited scientists at the University of Cambridge (in any field), as shown in the curated publication database of 100,000 top scientists world-wide (Ioannidis J et al, Plos Biology, 2019).
Tony is a co-founder and director of the Milner Therapeutics Institute, whose mission is to deliver better therapies through collaborations with industry. He is founder and director of Cambridge Gravity, an organisation for the promotion of science at the University of Cambridge. He is founder and patron of a cancer charity in Spain called Conquer Cancer (Vencer el Cancer). He is on the Scientific Advisory Board of the Institute of Cancer Research (UK) and on the Executive Board of the Cambridge Cancer Centre.
Tony is a co-founder and ex-director of Abcam plc, a publicly trading research reagents company in Cambridge, a co-founder and ex-director of Chroma Therapeutics, a drug discovery company based in Oxford, and a co-founder and current director of STORM Therapeutics, a drug discovery company based in Cambridge.
Job Titles:
- Building Services Manager
Job Titles:
- Image Analysis Specialist
I aim to use acute protein inhibition to better understand the temporal relationships between polarity proteins. Specifically, I am establishing a method to inhibit the lateral protein Dlg while live-imaging follicle cells. I am also working with Helene on projects investigating aPKC and roles of polarity protein interactions in embryogenesis.
Job Titles:
- Distinguished Professor, NCBS Institute ( Bangalore ) and Distinguished Fellow, Nehru Center
Job Titles:
- Principal Research Fellow and Professor of Developmental Genetics
- Professor
- Senior Group Leader
Professor Julie Ahringer PhD FRS FMedSci
Senior Group Leader, Wellcome Investigator, Professor of Genetics and Genomics, Member of the University Department of Genetics
After doing her postdoc in the Jackson lab, Soo-Hwang worked for Cancer Research UK. Learning from the CRUK model she and two colleagues established Cancer Research Malaysia, the country's first independent cancer research non-profit organisation. She remains as Chief Scientific Officer and is also Principal Investigator on three major breast and ovarian cancer projects. Her research "puts Asians on the map for Precision Medicine", and this contributed to the award of an OBE from Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth in 2018.
Job Titles:
- Senior Research Laboratory Technician
Job Titles:
- Media / Glasswashing Technician
Job Titles:
- Media / Glasswashing Technician
Job Titles:
- Media / Glasswashing Manager
Job Titles:
- Shared Facilities Manager
Job Titles:
- Senior Research Laboratory Technician
My work mainly focuses on applying expansion microscopy (ExM) on fly midgut. I will combine the ExM with immunostaining of different membrane polarity marker proteins to study the epithelial cell polarization in Drosophila midgut in depth. My work may provide a better understanding of this alternative polarity system and what goes wrong when cells fail to polarize in the nano-scale resolution.