Lab Members
Magdalena did her Ph.D. in Andrzej Tarkowski’s group (Warsaw University, Poland). She came to Cambridge in 1995 to join Martin Evans’ lab with the long-term aim of studying the mechanisms of regulative nature of development and spatial patterning in the early mouse embryo. She was awarded a Senior Research Fellowship from the Lister Institute to start her independent group at the Wellcome Trust/Cancer Research UK Gurdon Institute in Cambridge in 1997. In 2001 she became a Wellcome Senior Research Fellow. She has had a long-standing relationship with EMBO; first as an EMBO fellow, then she received an EMBO Young Investigator Award (2001-2004), and in 2007 was elected to EMBO membership. Magdalena became a Reader in Developmental Biology in 2007. In 2008 Magdalena became the First Anne McLaren Awardee from the International Society of Differentiation.
PostDocs
Aga joined Magda's lab in 2006 as a Ph.D. student. She is looking at the molecular mechanism behind the first cell fate decision that generates pluripotent ICM and the differentiated extra-embryonic lineage, the trophectoderm. Aga has recently successfully defended her thesis.
Anna completed her PhD in the lab of Prof. Marek Maleszewski in the Department of Embryology, Warsaw, Poland. Anna joined us in September 2008 to study the role of cytoplasmic flows upon egg activation, in addition to a number of protein kinases in the regulation of the first cell division.
Maria did her undergraduate degree in Molecular Biology and Genetics, in Democritious University of Thrace, Greece. After her undergraduate studies she worked in the Cell Biology Division of the Biomedical Research Foundation (BRF) of the Academy of Athens. She joined Magda’s group in 2006 to do her PhD after she was awarded a Greek States Scholarship Foundation PhD fellowship and she studies the spatial and temporal localisation of a number of transcription factors involved in the first cell fate decision. Maria has recently successfully defended her thesis.
Paula is a joint postdoc between Magdalena and David Glover's lab. Paula is examining the mechanism of centrosome formation and spindle orientation in the early mouse embryo.
Bernhard did his PhD in the Gurdon Institute in 2006 working on Xenopus embryos in Nancy Papadopulu’s group. He joined Magdalena’s group in 2006 to work on a collaborative project between Jon Pines and Magda on studying the role of a number of cell cycle regulators in early cleavage divisions of the mouse embryo.
Ivan completed his BSc in molecular biology and MSc in genetic and cell engineering at the University of Sofia. He worked on plant's transgenesis at the Agrobiotech institute and later on postranslational modifications of HMG proteins at the Institute of Molecular biology, Sofia, Bulgaria. He did his PhD at the Max Planck Institute of Immunobiology and Epigenetics, Freiburg, Germany, at the group of Prof. Rolf Kemler, working on cell adhesion during early mouse development. Ivan joined Magda’s group at 2012.
Krzysztof completed a MSc in Biotechnology in 2000, specialising in molecular biology at the Jagiellonski University, Kraków, Poland; working on thermostable cellulase. In 2006 he gained a PhD in physiological chemistry/medical biochemistry at the Dept of Medical Biochemistry and Immunology, Uppsala University, Sweden; working on biosynthesis and evolution of haptoglobin. This was followed by a PostDoc in the Dr David Ish-Horowicz lab, at the London Research Institute/CRUK; working on RNA localization and transposons silencing in Drosophila.
Graduate Students
Helen studied at St George's Hospital Medical School, University of London achieving her BSc in Biomedical Sciences in 1997 followed by MB BS degrees in 2000. She went on to practice clinical medicine, specialising in obstetrics & gynaecology, and achieved her MRCOG in 2007. She joined the lab in 2008 having gained a Wellcome Trust PhD Clinical Fellowship and is investigating the fate of aneuploid cells in pre-implantation development.
Maryna joined Magda's lab in 2010 as a Ph.D. student. She is examining chromatin remodelling and its involvement in the switches between differentiation and pluripotency.
Sarah joined Magda's lab in 2010 as a PhD student. She is investigating the mechanism behind generation of three distinct cell lineages of the mouse embryo.
Stoyana joined Magda's lab in 2011 as a PhD student at the In Vivo Imaging in Biology & Medicine Programme. Stoyana investigates the mechanism behind the developmental clock in the early mouse embryo.
CY obtained his undergraduate degree in Biochemistry from Imperial College London. As part of his undergrad he spent a year in Thomas Perlmann's lab in the Ludwig Institute/Karolinska Institutet in Stockholm, Sweden. There he worked on using lentivirus to activate the neuronal cell fate before joining Magda's lab in 2011 to study cell fate specification in the pre-implantation embryo.
Visiting Researchers
Rich completed a Ph.D. in Genetics in 1997 at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory with Winship Herr studying the regulation of Herpes Virus transcription and a postdoc with Bob Tjian at UC Berkeley in 2003 studying mechanisms of tissue-specific gene expression in the mouse. He is currently on sabbatical leave from Brown University where his lab studies how chromatin and transcription factors function to regulate diverse aspects of embryogenesis and gametogenesis and is interested in how this machinery contributes to early cell fate decisions in the mouse embryo.
Sameer joned Magda's lab in 2012 and is a visiting PhD student. Sameer's project is to use and develop further our new in vitro culture system that allows to visualize dynamics of morphogenesis beyond the blastocyst stage.
Personal assistant
John Crang
Former Group Members and their current positions:
Samantha Morris (Former Post-Doc). Post-Doc with George Daley, Harvard, Children's Hospital Boston.
Roy Teo (Former PhD Student)
Seema Grewal (Former Post-Doc). Reviews editor at Development.
Alex Bruce (Former Post-Doc). Group Leader. University of South Bohemia. Czech Republic.
Emlyn Parfitt (Former PhD Student). Post-Doc, with Micheal Shen, Columbia University, NYC
Rui Martins (Former Post-Doc). Post-Doc, London
Qiang Wu (Former Post-Doc). Assistant Professor, Singapore
Maria Elena Torres-Padilla (Former Post-Doc). Chargée de Recherche, Strasbourg, France
Lucy Richardson (Former PhD Student). Scientist in IVF clinic
Joanna Grabarek (Former Post-Doc). Post-Doc with Dr. Berenicka Plusa
Lee Carpenter. Senior Scientist, Stem Cells and Immunotherapies, NHS Blood and Transplant, John Radcliffe Hospital, Oxford, UK. Former post-doctoral fellow.
Stephen Frankenberg. Post-doc with Dr. Claire Chazaud at Faculté de Médecine, Clermont-Ferrand, France. Former post-doctoral fellow.
Dionne Gray. Research assistant at the Department of Anatomy, University of Cambridge. Former research assistant.
Seiki Haraguchi. Senior Scientist at Chiba Cancer Center Research Institute, Chiba, Japan. Former post-doctoral fellow.
Karin Lyke-Anderesen. Adjunkt, Assistant Professor, Department of Molecular Biology, Aarhus University, Denmark. Former post-doctoral fellow.
Sigolene Meilhac. Chargée de Recherche à l’Institut Pasteur, Paris, France. Former post-doctoral fellow.
Daniel Mesnard. Post-doc with Dr. Daniel Constam, ISREC, Lausanne, Switzerland. Former PhD student obtained his Ph.D. thesis in 2005 under the direction of M. Zernicka-Goetz.
Catherine Moore. Post-doc with Prof. Phil Ingham at University of Sheffield, United Kingdom. Former graduate student, obtained her Ph.D. thesis in 2005 under the direction of M. Zernicka-Goetz.
Jie Na. Research Fellow, Centre for Stem Cell Biology, Department of Biomedical Science, University of Sheffield, United Kingdom. Former post-doctoral fellow.
Karolina Piotrowska-Nitsche. Post-doc with Prof. Anthony Chan, Yerkes National Primates Research Center, Department of Human Genetics, Emory University, Atlanta, USA. Former post-doctoral fellow.
Berenika Plusa. Former post-doctoral fellow, received an independent fellowship to set up a group in Manchester
Miguel Soares. Post-doc with Dr. Anne Fergunson-Smith, Department of Anatomy, University of Cambridge. Former post-doctoral fellow.
Roberta Weber. London, United Kingdom. Former research assistant.
Florence Wianny. Chargée de Recherche INSERM atDepartment of Stem Cells and Cortical Development, Lyon, France. Former post-doctoral fellow.