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 Matthew Haines Research Associate \| matthew.haines10@imperial.ac.uk Matthew is working on a joint research collaboration with Richard Murray's lab at Caltech and funded by the NSF and EPSRC, the project is focused on developing new metrology for synthetic biology cell free systems.
	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 Monisha Pathania Research Associate \| m.pathania@imperial.ac.uk, +44 07404 807 702 Monisha was a Marie Curie Sklodowska Fellow within the ITN Translocation project and was enrolled in a PhD program at the Institute for Cell and Molecular Biosciences (ICaMB), Newcastle University, UK. She completed her PhD in 2018. Currently, Monisha is a postdoctoral fellow at MRC Centre for Molecular Bacteriology and Infection (CMBI) in Imperial College London, in the research programme led by Prof. Angelika Grundling and Prof. Paul Freemont. Her work here is focussed on providing structural and mechanistic insight into the activity of diadenylate cyclase DacA, an essential membrane protein responsible for the production of c-di-AMP in Staphylococcus aureus.
	Dr Michael Crone Research Assistant \| m.crone15@imperial.ac.uk, +44 07521 249 424 Michael is currently a Research Assistant in the Freemont group working on Low Cost Viral Diagnostics as a part of a GCRF project, together with collaborators at the University of Cambridge, CSIR and University of Pretoria (South Africa). He is also a part of the UK DRI Care Research and Technology Center focusing on developing point of care diagnostics.
	Dr Raphaella Jackson Research Associate \| r.jackson@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.
	Caoimhe Canavan PhD student \| caoimhe.canavan13@imperial.ac.uk Caoimhe’s project is focused on developing metrology standards for mammalian cell-free systems.
	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

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 Luke A. Yates Research Associate \| luke.yates@imperial.ac.uk, +44 07795 570 338, @yates_luke Luke is a post-doctoral research associate and faculty research fellow (July 2018). Luke completed his D.Phil in Clinical Medicine at Oxford University (Merton College), but his research career has predominantly focused on investigating protein function using structural biology as a means to provide a mechanistic understanding in life and in disease.
	Dr Lucas Kuhlen Research Associate \| l.kuhlen@imperial.ac.uk, +44 07482 535 069 Lucas uses cryo-EM to study the structure of BRCA2.
	Katie Lister Research Technician \| k.lister@imperial.ac.uk
	Alex Carver PhD student \| a.carver19@imperial.ac.uk Alex completed his MSci at University College London, examining the effect of changes to the cytoskeleton in cancer migration and metastasis. He is currently working on proteins involved in DNA damage repair, specifically those involved in homologous recombination, and how mutations in these key proteins can cause cancer development.
	Forson Gao PhD student \| forson.gao15@imperial.ac.uk Forson is investigating the mechanisms of transcription activation by bacterial enhancer binding proteins in RNA polymerase-σ54 transcription initiation complexes. The goal of Forson’s project is to understand how interactions between bEBPs, σ54, RNAP and DNA during the ATP hydrolysis cycle facilitates transcription initiation. To do this, we use time-resolved cryo-electron microscopy and a range of biochemical approaches. This work could be used in the future to inform the design of novel antibiotics.
	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.
	Bowen Zhang PhD student \| bowen.zhang16@imperial.ac.uk Bowen’s project is focusing on using X-ray crystallography and cryo-EM to elucidate the role of different enhancer binding proteins in bacterial transcription regulation, which could potentially resolve novel drug target against various pathogens.
	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.
	Dr Dennis Mwangangi Research Associate \| d.mwangangi@imperial.ac.uk Dennis earned his PhD from the National University of Singapore using structural biology to study actin cytoskeleton. He joined the Wigley lab as a post-doc in 2020, and currently uses electron microscopy to study chromatin remodelling complexes of the INO80 family.
	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.
	Michael Skehan Laboratory Technician \| m.skehan@imperial.ac.uk Michael completed a BSc in Structural Molecular Biology at Birkbeck College (2018) before joining the Wigley Lab as a technician in 2020. Main work involves protein expression and purification relating to chromatin remodelling complexes of the INO80 family.

Aylett lab

Aylett lab members
	Kailash Ramlaul Research Assistant \| k.ramlaul@imperial.ac.uk, +44 020 7594 9598, @thekailashkai Kailash is an Oxford Biochemistry graduate, now a research assistant and part-time PhD student at Imperial. He is using cryo-electron microscopy to structurally characterise protein complexes at the nexus of cell growth signalling.

Low lab

Low lab members
	Dr Matteo Tassinari Research Associate \| m.tassinari@imperial.ac.uk Matteo is working on secretion of specific virulence factors allowing pathogenic bacteria to attack target cells and, in some cases, to survive within the host. The TAD pili transport system represents a subtype of the Type IV filament secretion systems. The TAD system has been found in many bacterial phyla, including Gram positive and Gram negative pathogens. It is mainly involved in the secretion of pilins subunits, which in turn compose the pili, an elongated extra-cellular structure anchored to the cell wall involved in substrate adhesion. The objective of this research project is to understand the molecular mechanism underlying TAD system function using structural biology techniques such as cryo-electron microscopy.
	Dr Michael Hohl Research Associate \| m.hohl@imperial.ac.uk, +44 07557 230 592 Michael is interested in structural and functional investigations of bacterial secretion systems to find out how these systems help the cell to interact with the environment. Several bacterial secretion systems give the bacteria an advantage allowing them to form for example biofilms. The biofilm formation is directly connected to antibiotic resistance a fast emerging problem nowadays.
	Dr Souvik Naskar Research Associate \| s.naskar@imperial.ac.uk
	Dr Ioanna Stefani Research Associate \| i.stefani@imperial.ac.uk
	Andrew Morrison PhD student \| 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 PhD student \| 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.

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.
	Clare Robinson PhD student \| c.robinson20@imperial.ac.uk Clare is studying how to engineer bacteria to detect inflammation and spy on the other microbes in the mammalian gut.