In this section

Our people

Freemont lab

Freemont lab members
	Dr Kirsten Jensen Senior Research Officer \| k.jensen@imperial.ac.uk, +44 020 7594 3058 Kirsten has been working in research for over 20 years. She began her career in Hamburg at the Heinrich Pette Institute - Leibniz Institute for Experimental Virology, where she worked on the molecular basis of Acute Promyelocytic Leukaemia
	Dr Richard Kelwick RSE Enterprise Fellow \| r.kelwick@imperial.ac.uk, +44 020 7594 3058, @rkelwick Richard is a Royal Society of Edinburgh Enterprise Fellow (2018-2019) and an entrepreneurially driven researcher, with expertise in both cancer biology and synthetic biology.
	Dr Alexander J. Webb Research Associate \| alexander.webb1@imperial.ac.uk, +44 020 7594 3058, @ajwebb1979 Alex is a Microbiologist with a research focus on engineering bioreporters for global health.
	Dr Rory Cave Research Associate \| r.cave@imperial.ac.uk
	Thomas Adam Research Assistant \| thomas.adam19@imperial.ac.uk
	Dr Tejasvi Shivakumar Research Associate\| t.shivakumar@imperial.ac.uk
	Martin Tran Research Assistant \| martin.tran13@imperial.ac.uk Martin is a Research Assistant working as part of the UK DRI Care Research and Technology Centre. Martin's main focus is on developing point of care diagnostics for early detection of Urinary Tract Infections for people living with Dementia.
	Matas Deveikis PhD student \| m.deveikis20@imperial.ac.uk Matas is interested in automation and biotherapeutics. He is working on developing a workflow for prototyping proteins using cell-free systems and machine learning.
	Pedro Lovatt Garcia PhD student \| p.lovat-garcia21@imperial.ac.uk
	Dr Soo Mei Chee Laboratory Manager \| s.chee@imperial.ac.uk, +44 020 7594 8556 Soo Mei is the Laboratory Manager for the Department of Infectious Disease.

Zhang lab

	Dr Bilge Argunhan Marie Sklodowska-Curie Individual Fellow\| b.argunhan@imperial.ac.uk, @BilgeArg Bilge is an MSCA research fellow investigating recombinational DNA repair. During his PhD at the University of Sussex (2011-2016), Bilge employed genetics and cell biology to study meiosis. He then moved to the Tokyo Institute of Technology in Japan as a postdoctoral researcher to investigate the mechanisms of recombinational DNA repair through biochemical and genetic approaches (2016-2021). He is now combining biochemical reconstitutions with structural analyses to elucidate how Rad51 is regulated at the molecular level.
	Dr Jie Zhang Research Associate \| jzhang13@ic.ac.uk Jie used to work on influenza A viruses to understand the influence of virus evolution on its binding property using X-ray crystallography and bio-layer interferometry when she did her PhD in Francis Crick Institute. Currently, her projects mainly focus on studying BRCA2 and Tel1 related protein-protein interactions involved in DNA damage response pathway, using Cryo-EM and other biophysics methods.
	Dr Niranjan Kumar Research Associate \| niranjan.kumar@imperial.ac.uk Niranjan is working on the dynamic modulation of RAD51 in homologous recombination through employing different biochemical, biophysical, and structural biology techniques. We are trying to understand the mechanistic details about how the fine tuning of different positive and negative regulators of RAD51 is essential for genome stability. Prior to joining the Zhang lab as a post-doctoral research associate, Niranjan did his Ph.D. in structural biology from the Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bengaluru, India.
	Dr Lucas Kuhlen Research Associate \| l.kuhlen@imperial.ac.uk, +44 07482 535 069 Lucas uses cryo-EM to study the structure of BRCA2.
	Bowen Zhang PhD student \| bowen.zhang16@imperial.ac.uk
	Pengtao Liang PhD student \| bowen.zhang16@imperial.ac.uk
	Stephanie Tye PhD student \| s.tye18@imperial.ac.uk Stephanie is using biochemical and structural approaches to gain mechanistic insights into the tumour suppressor protein BRCA1.
	Lindsey Lee PhD student \| yin.lee24@imperial.ac.uk
	Megan Battley Research Technician \| m.battley@imperial.ac.uk, +44 07565 811 189

Wigley lab

Wigley lab members
	Dr Adam Jalal Research Associate \| a.jalal@imperial.ac.uk Adam earned his PhD from the John Innes Centre where he worked on the ParB/Noc family of CTPases. Currently, Adam's research focuses on chromatin remodelling by the INO80 family of proteins.
	Dr Paul Girvan Research Associate \| p.girvan@imperial.ac.uk Paul has got experience in single molecule imaging and an interest in unpicking the molecular mechanisms of the cell. Currently, Paul is working on chromatin remodelling complexes.
	Liz McCormack Senior Scientific Officer \| e.mccormack@imperial.ac.uk, +44 020 7594 8437 Liz completed a BAppSci in Australia and a number of years later a part-time MSc in Biomolecular Organization at Birkbeck College. Liz worked at the Institute of Cancer Research for 14 years in Professor Keith Willison’s Lab before joining the Wigley Lab in 2011.
	Valerie Good Laboratory Manager \| v.good@imperial.ac.uk, +44 07843 007 638 Valerie is the manager of the Structural Biology Baculovirus expression facility at Imperial College.

Aylett lab

Aylett lab members
	Dr Chao - Sheng Chen Research Associate \| chao-sheng.chen@imperial.ac.uk

Low lab

Low lab members
	Dr Jayanti Singh Research Associate \| j.singh8@imperial.ac.uk
	Dr Souvik Naskar Research Associate \| s.naskar@imperial.ac.uk
	Dr Ioanna Stefani Research Associate \| i.stefani@imperial.ac.uk Ioanna’s studies and subsequent career have spanned across several countries, with the main common factor her interest in protein structure-function relationship. Born and raised in Cyprus, Ioanna moved to Alexandroupolis, Greece for undergraduate studies in Molecular Biology and Genetics, then to Bath, UK, for a MRes in Protein Structure and Function. After that, she moved to Lausanne, Switzerland for her PhD in Structural Biochemistry, to study the conformational flexibility of the Munc18-1/Syntaxin-1a protein complex. She is currently back in the UK to continue her Research in Structural Biology as a postdoc to study the structure of bacterial macromolecular complexes using Cryo-EM/ET.
	Andrew Morrison Research Associate\| a.morrison17@imperial.ac.uk, +44 07531 225 751 Andrew’s research concerns new methodologies to discover antibiotics from these uncultivable bacteria and from silent antibiotic biosynthetic gene clusters. He focuses on in situ cultivation, a technique involving growing bacteria in their native habitat, and adapting it into high-throughput screening strategies. Andrew also focuses on increasing the efficiency of antibiotic detection utilising fluorescent/bioluminescent model pathogens as reporter systems.
	Max Manley Research Assistant \| max.manley16@imperial.ac.uk Cell membranes separate the complex inner workings of the cell from its environment and are vital to life itself. Max aims to understand how bacteria remodel their cell membranes. His work focuses on bacterial dynamin-like protein and PspA, both of which have eukaryotic homologues. Thus, these proteins could reveal ancient conserved principles of membrane remodelling across all three kingdoms of life. Max studies these proteins using a combination of cryo-electron microscopy, biophysical and biochemical techniques.
	Alasdair Leeding PhD student \| a.leeding23@imperial.ac.uk Bacteria can assemble complex, membrane-spanning macromolecular assemblies known as secretion systems. Secretion systems can secrete a diverse array of substrates and are critical to infection and biofilm formation in a number of pathogens. Focusing on the Tad (Tight Adherence) secretion system (TadSS), Alasdair aims to understand the mechanism by which the TadSS assembles and extrudes a pilus. His work combines methods in molecular biology, protein biochemistry and cryo-electron microscopy.

Riglar lab

Riglar lab
	Dr David Carreno Yugueros Research Associate \| d.carreno-yugueros@imperial.ac.uk David holds a PhD in Veterinary Medicine from the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC). Currently he is investigating spatial variability within the mammalian gut microbiome during health and inflammatory disease at Riglar’s lab.
	Nina Short PhD student \| nina.short15@imperial.ac.uk Nina joined the Riglar Lab in November 2020 as a PhD student and works on engineering synthetic circuits within bacteria to sense and control the gut microbiome. She has an undergraduate degree in Biological Sciences and a Master's degree in Molecular and Cellular Biosciences from Imperial College London. She has also worked at the UCL Great Ormond Street Institute of Child Health, where she undertook an 8-week studentship investigating the process of mammalian neurulation.
	Gadea Meecham-Garcia PhD student \| g.meecham-garcia24@imperial.ac.uk
	Will McKenny PhD student \| w.mckenny23@imperial.ac.uk William is studying how to engineer bacteria to detect colorectal cancer for the stratification of immunotherapy. His work will also focus on how to translate synthetic biology from the lab into the clinic via the use of clinical datasets and samples.

Manka lab

Krishna Kumar lab

General enquiries

Section Manager

Brett Onslow

b.onslow@imperial.ac.uk

+44 (0)20 7594 3871

Personal Assistant for the Section of Structural Biology

Kasia Pearce

k.pearce@imperial.ac.uk

+44 (0)20 7594 2917

Laboratory Manager

Soo Mei Chee

s.chee@imperial.ac.uk

	Dr Kirsten Jensen Senior Research Officer \| k.jensen@imperial.ac.uk, +44 020 7594 3058 Kirsten has been working in research for over 20 years. She began her career in Hamburg at the Heinrich Pette Institute - Leibniz Institute for Experimental Virology, where she worked on the molecular basis of Acute Promyelocytic Leukaemia
	Dr Richard Kelwick RSE Enterprise Fellow \| r.kelwick@imperial.ac.uk, +44 020 7594 3058, @rkelwick Richard is a Royal Society of Edinburgh Enterprise Fellow (2018-2019) and an entrepreneurially driven researcher, with expertise in both cancer biology and synthetic biology.
	Dr Alexander J. Webb Research Associate \| alexander.webb1@imperial.ac.uk, +44 020 7594 3058, @ajwebb1979 Alex is a Microbiologist with a research focus on engineering bioreporters for global health.
	Dr Rory Cave Research Associate \| r.cave@imperial.ac.uk
	Thomas Adam Research Assistant \| thomas.adam19@imperial.ac.uk
	Dr Tejasvi Shivakumar Research Associate\| t.shivakumar@imperial.ac.uk
	Martin Tran Research Assistant \| martin.tran13@imperial.ac.uk Martin is a Research Assistant working as part of the UK DRI Care Research and Technology Centre. Martin's main focus is on developing point of care diagnostics for early detection of Urinary Tract Infections for people living with Dementia.
	Matas Deveikis PhD student \| m.deveikis20@imperial.ac.uk Matas is interested in automation and biotherapeutics. He is working on developing a workflow for prototyping proteins using cell-free systems and machine learning.
	Pedro Lovatt Garcia PhD student \| p.lovat-garcia21@imperial.ac.uk
	Dr Soo Mei Chee Laboratory Manager \| s.chee@imperial.ac.uk, +44 020 7594 8556 Soo Mei is the Laboratory Manager for the Department of Infectious Disease.

	Dr Bilge Argunhan Marie Sklodowska-Curie Individual Fellow\| b.argunhan@imperial.ac.uk, @BilgeArg Bilge is an MSCA research fellow investigating recombinational DNA repair. During his PhD at the University of Sussex (2011-2016), Bilge employed genetics and cell biology to study meiosis. He then moved to the Tokyo Institute of Technology in Japan as a postdoctoral researcher to investigate the mechanisms of recombinational DNA repair through biochemical and genetic approaches (2016-2021). He is now combining biochemical reconstitutions with structural analyses to elucidate how Rad51 is regulated at the molecular level.
	Dr Jie Zhang Research Associate \| jzhang13@ic.ac.uk Jie used to work on influenza A viruses to understand the influence of virus evolution on its binding property using X-ray crystallography and bio-layer interferometry when she did her PhD in Francis Crick Institute. Currently, her projects mainly focus on studying BRCA2 and Tel1 related protein-protein interactions involved in DNA damage response pathway, using Cryo-EM and other biophysics methods.
	Dr Niranjan Kumar Research Associate \| niranjan.kumar@imperial.ac.uk Niranjan is working on the dynamic modulation of RAD51 in homologous recombination through employing different biochemical, biophysical, and structural biology techniques. We are trying to understand the mechanistic details about how the fine tuning of different positive and negative regulators of RAD51 is essential for genome stability. Prior to joining the Zhang lab as a post-doctoral research associate, Niranjan did his Ph.D. in structural biology from the Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bengaluru, India.
	Dr Lucas Kuhlen Research Associate \| l.kuhlen@imperial.ac.uk, +44 07482 535 069 Lucas uses cryo-EM to study the structure of BRCA2.
	Bowen Zhang PhD student \| bowen.zhang16@imperial.ac.uk
	Pengtao Liang PhD student \| bowen.zhang16@imperial.ac.uk
	Stephanie Tye PhD student \| s.tye18@imperial.ac.uk Stephanie is using biochemical and structural approaches to gain mechanistic insights into the tumour suppressor protein BRCA1.
	Lindsey Lee PhD student \| yin.lee24@imperial.ac.uk
	Megan Battley Research Technician \| m.battley@imperial.ac.uk, +44 07565 811 189

	Dr Adam Jalal Research Associate \| a.jalal@imperial.ac.uk Adam earned his PhD from the John Innes Centre where he worked on the ParB/Noc family of CTPases. Currently, Adam's research focuses on chromatin remodelling by the INO80 family of proteins.
	Dr Paul Girvan Research Associate \| p.girvan@imperial.ac.uk Paul has got experience in single molecule imaging and an interest in unpicking the molecular mechanisms of the cell. Currently, Paul is working on chromatin remodelling complexes.
	Liz McCormack Senior Scientific Officer \| e.mccormack@imperial.ac.uk, +44 020 7594 8437 Liz completed a BAppSci in Australia and a number of years later a part-time MSc in Biomolecular Organization at Birkbeck College. Liz worked at the Institute of Cancer Research for 14 years in Professor Keith Willison’s Lab before joining the Wigley Lab in 2011.
	Valerie Good Laboratory Manager \| v.good@imperial.ac.uk, +44 07843 007 638 Valerie is the manager of the Structural Biology Baculovirus expression facility at Imperial College.

	Dr Jayanti Singh Research Associate \| j.singh8@imperial.ac.uk
	Dr Souvik Naskar Research Associate \| s.naskar@imperial.ac.uk
	Dr Ioanna Stefani Research Associate \| i.stefani@imperial.ac.uk Ioanna’s studies and subsequent career have spanned across several countries, with the main common factor her interest in protein structure-function relationship. Born and raised in Cyprus, Ioanna moved to Alexandroupolis, Greece for undergraduate studies in Molecular Biology and Genetics, then to Bath, UK, for a MRes in Protein Structure and Function. After that, she moved to Lausanne, Switzerland for her PhD in Structural Biochemistry, to study the conformational flexibility of the Munc18-1/Syntaxin-1a protein complex. She is currently back in the UK to continue her Research in Structural Biology as a postdoc to study the structure of bacterial macromolecular complexes using Cryo-EM/ET.
	Andrew Morrison Research Associate\| a.morrison17@imperial.ac.uk, +44 07531 225 751 Andrew’s research concerns new methodologies to discover antibiotics from these uncultivable bacteria and from silent antibiotic biosynthetic gene clusters. He focuses on in situ cultivation, a technique involving growing bacteria in their native habitat, and adapting it into high-throughput screening strategies. Andrew also focuses on increasing the efficiency of antibiotic detection utilising fluorescent/bioluminescent model pathogens as reporter systems.
	Max Manley Research Assistant \| max.manley16@imperial.ac.uk Cell membranes separate the complex inner workings of the cell from its environment and are vital to life itself. Max aims to understand how bacteria remodel their cell membranes. His work focuses on bacterial dynamin-like protein and PspA, both of which have eukaryotic homologues. Thus, these proteins could reveal ancient conserved principles of membrane remodelling across all three kingdoms of life. Max studies these proteins using a combination of cryo-electron microscopy, biophysical and biochemical techniques.
	Alasdair Leeding PhD student \| a.leeding23@imperial.ac.uk Bacteria can assemble complex, membrane-spanning macromolecular assemblies known as secretion systems. Secretion systems can secrete a diverse array of substrates and are critical to infection and biofilm formation in a number of pathogens. Focusing on the Tad (Tight Adherence) secretion system (TadSS), Alasdair aims to understand the mechanism by which the TadSS assembles and extrudes a pilus. His work combines methods in molecular biology, protein biochemistry and cryo-electron microscopy.

	Dr David Carreno Yugueros Research Associate \| d.carreno-yugueros@imperial.ac.uk David holds a PhD in Veterinary Medicine from the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC). Currently he is investigating spatial variability within the mammalian gut microbiome during health and inflammatory disease at Riglar’s lab.
	Nina Short PhD student \| nina.short15@imperial.ac.uk Nina joined the Riglar Lab in November 2020 as a PhD student and works on engineering synthetic circuits within bacteria to sense and control the gut microbiome. She has an undergraduate degree in Biological Sciences and a Master's degree in Molecular and Cellular Biosciences from Imperial College London. She has also worked at the UCL Great Ormond Street Institute of Child Health, where she undertook an 8-week studentship investigating the process of mammalian neurulation.
	Gadea Meecham-Garcia PhD student \| g.meecham-garcia24@imperial.ac.uk
	Will McKenny PhD student \| w.mckenny23@imperial.ac.uk William is studying how to engineer bacteria to detect colorectal cancer for the stratification of immunotherapy. His work will also focus on how to translate synthetic biology from the lab into the clinic via the use of clinical datasets and samples.

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