Clarice D. Aiello

Clarice D. Aiello is a quantum engineer interested in how quantum physics informs biology at the nanoscale. She is an expert on nanosensors harnessing room-temperature quantum effects in noisy environments. After obtaining her PhD from MIT, she completed postdoctoral training at Stanford and UC Berkeley.

Edoardo Calizza

Edoardo Calizza is currently a Researcher and Adjunct Professor of Ecology at the Department of Environmental Biology, Sapienza University of Rome. After graduating in Ecobiology from the Sapienza University of Rome, he obtained his PhD in 2014, again from the Sapienza University, with a dissertation titled “Biodiversity organisation and disturbance in detritus-based systems.”

Elizabeth Murchison

Elizabeth Murchison is Professor of Comparative Oncology and Genetics at the University of Cambridge, Department of Veterinary Medicine. She leads the Transmissible Cancer Group, working to further understand transmissible cancers in dogs and Tasmanian devils.

Elizabeth grew up in Tasmania and performed her undergraduate studies in genetics and biochemistry at the University of Melbourne. After moving to the US to perform her PhD in molecular biology and genetics at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, Elizabeth returned to Australia where she initiated genetic studies of the Tasmanian devil facial tumour 1 (DFT1). In 2009, she was awarded an NHMRC Overseas Biomedical Fellowship to travel to the Wellcome Sanger Institute, UK, where she was involved in sequencing the Tasmanian devil genome as well as genetic analysis of DFT1 and CTVT. Elizabeth joined the University of Cambridge, Department of Veterinary Medicine in 2013. In her spare time, Elizabeth enjoys hiking in Tasmania’s remote wilderness.

Ikram Blilou

Professor Blilou’ s research focuses on how plant cells communicate to transfer positional information and to instruct specific functions during pattern formation. This involves studying regulatory networks that control protein movement and asymmetric cell division in plant roots, by mapping protein complexes in vivo at the cellular resolution, and by unraveling how their distinct spatial distribution leads to specific gene expression and proper cell fate acquisition.

Professor Blilou’s research group also aims to understand molecular mechanisms of growth/defense trade-offs in plants by unraveling how the same set of developmental genes can regulate defense response under stress conditions. The team also intends to understand adaptive strategies used by desert plants (using date palms as a model) to survive in hostile conditions.

Jean Fan

Jean is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Biomedical Engineering at Johns Hopkins University. She was previously an NCI F99/K00 post-doctoral fellow in the lab of Dr. Xiaowei Zhuang at Harvard University. She received her PhD in Bioinformatics and Integrative Genomics at Harvard under the mentorship of Dr. Peter Kharchenko at the Department of Biomedical Informatics and in close collaboration with Dr. Catherine Wu at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute.

Paul Guichard

The lab focuses on deciphering the structural mechanisms governing centriole assembly. To this end, we are combining the use of cell biology methods, in vitro reconstitution assays, cryo-microscopy / cryo-tomography and super-resolution microscopy to gain decisive insights into these mechanisms.

Prisca Liberali

Robust experimental model systems have recently been developed from adult or induced pluripotent stem cells that self-organise into organoid structures in vitro. In particular, intestinal organoids recapitulate most of the spatial and temporal processes of morphogenesis and patterning observed in the intestinal tissue. Starting from a single cell, they provide a unique experimental system in which every cell is fully tractable. This system also allows systematic perturbation by established gene perturbation methods. Our laboratory aims to understand the collective properties of these multi-cellular systems and their patterns, including how such properties arise from single-cell behaviour and organisation. Moreover, we develop and apply experimental and theoretical frameworks for the study of cellular heterogeneity during collective cell behaviour. We use high-content genetic perturbation screens and live-cell imaging with single-cell resolution, combined with advanced quantitative imaging, single cell genomics, and modelling of stem cells.

Sandra Smit

Saskia Brix

The Epifauna Department focuses on the creatures on or just above the seafloor. The focus of taxonomic research is on marine isopods. Special attention is given to the deep-sea fauna.

Tanmay Bharat

Our laboratory uses electron tomography, combined with several structural and cell biology techniques, to study cell surfaces of prokaryotes at the atomic level. Surface molecules mediate cellular interactions with the environment and play important roles in key processes including cell adhesion, biofilm formation and antibiotic tolerance in pathogenic bacteria.

Vittorio Sebastiano

Germ cells, preimplantation embryos and pluripotent stem cells at first glance seem to have nothing in common. A more careful look, though, reveals that they are very closely linked to each other. The zygote originates from the fusion of two highly specialized germ cells (the sperm and the oocyte) and in a few days develops into a blastocyst with a pluripotent cell population (the inner cell mass). These cells diverge from the extraembryonic cells of the trophoectoderm and can give rise to embryonic stem cells, in which a perpetual pluripotent and undifferentiated state is maintained.