Overview
Dr Jessica Rowley began working in the SAFB core Flow Cytometry Facility in January 2016. She developed her interest in cytometry whilst investigating pericytes, a rare stem cell population, as part of the Inflammation, Repair and Development group, at Imperial. Along with Dr Jill Johnson, Jessica studied the role of pericytes in airway smooth muscle thickening in a model of chronic airway inflammation.
Under the supervision of Prof. Malcolm Richardson and Dr. Sarah Herrick, Jessica obtained her PhD in 2014, from the University of Manchester with her thesis entitled ‘The Interaction of Aspergillus fumigatus with the Airway Epithelium’. During her PhD, she investigated the airway epithelial inflammatory response to fungal germination and growth, and the receptor-ligand interactions involved.
As part of the core facility, Jessica is now sorting a variety cells from a range of tissues including innate lymphoid cells from bronchoalveolar lavage, lymph node and lung, neutrophils from bone marrow and haematopoeitic stem cells from bone marrow and zebrafish. Jessica works with the facility's users to develop experimental protocols for immunophenotyping using multi-colour panels, 'small flow' analysis of extracellular vesicles, inorganic microparticles and bacteria and detection of fluorescent proteins in transfected cell lines.
If you are interested in utilising flow cytometry in your research, Jessica would love to hear from you.
Research and education:
2015 - Post-doctoral research assistant, Inflammation Repair and Development, Imperial College London
2014 - PhD Translational Medicine, University of Manchester
2009 - BSc (Hons) Biomedical Science, Manchester Metropolitan University