Erik joined the Department of Zoology in 2012 as a PhD student in the Akam lab. Since 2017 he has been a Trinity College Junior Research Fellow. He uses wet lab experiments, image analysis, and computational modelling to study segmentation gene networks in arthropods.

A biochemist by training, a molecular immunologist by association and a geneticist out of conviction, Felix finds it odd to write about himself in the third person. After studying programmed DNA damage and its repair in antibody-producing B cells during my PhD with Cristina Rada and Michael Neuberger, I have joined the lab of KJ Patel to study reactive (by-)products of metabolism which may be responsible for a broad range of insults to our cells and their genomes. Potentially, these lesions might engage multiple DNA repair pathways about whose natural substrates remarkably little is known, while failure to resolve them could ultimately lead to stem cell attrition or mutation.

Sasha works on systems biology of circadian rhythms by studying circadian gene expression dynamics in response to various perturbations. She is curious to see the relationship between immediate and long-term responses to link stochastic gene expression to evolution of the clock network.

Shlomit joined Alfonso Martinez-Arias' lab in the department of Genetics as a PhD student in 2015. In her PhD she is combining experimental biology work on mouse embryonic stem cells and her engineering background to better understand how chemical signalling and self-cell organization influence the balance between self-renewing stem cells and their decision to differentiate.

Pau is a physicist by training. In 2014 he came to Cambridge to start a postdoc at the Sainsbury Laboratory. In his current research, he is studying different aspects of signalling and patterning at the tissue, cellular and subcellular levels. To do so, he uses combined theoretical and experimental approaches involving mathematical modelling, time lapse microscopy of fluorescent markers in plant tissues and in cell cultures, and quantitative image analysis.

Edouard is trained as a theoretical biophysicist, and uses methods from soft matter, hydrodynamics and mechanics to study the morphogenesis of epithelial tissues, as well as cancer initiation, in collaboration with experimental biologists. He also likes to do a bit of experimental work from time to time!

Tom joined the labs of Ben Simons and John Marioni in November 2017, and is using single cell RNAseq data from developing mouse embryos to investigate plasticity and compensation during cell fate specification.

Having a background in quantum many-particle theory, David became interested in the theoretical understanding of collective phenomena in living systems. His current main focus is on how the pool of stem cells that maintains adult tissue is regulated through biochemical signaling and how it recovers after injury. In addition, he works on embryonic pattern formation such as the segmentation of the vertebrate body axis and the development of the fly visual system. David is also involved in transferring the insights obtained in living systems to engineering concepts for technical applications.

Céline has background in physics and cell biophysics. After working on mechanical properties of cytoskeletal structures during her PhD in EPFL, Switzerland, she joined the group of Kevin Chalut at the Stem Cell Institute in 2015 to study the mechanical control of embryonic stem cell fate. In particular, she looks at how external forces from the micro-environment are transduced to the cell and the nucleus and ultimately impact cell fate decisions.

Dr Imen Lassadi obtained her PhD from Paul Sabatier University in Toulouse, France. During her PhD, she was involved in developing a multi-color tagging technique as well as a geometry-based software to study the organization of chromosomes in S. cerevisiae. After a post-doctoral stay in Pasteur Institute-Paris, where she worked on the impact of genome architecture and chromatin compaction in DNA damage repair in S. cerevisiae. Imen joined Dr Ross Waller' lab in the Department of Biochemistry as a Research Associate in 2016. She is studying the genome organization of Dinoflagellata which provide a model for a histone-independent mechanism of nuclear genome maintenance and function.

Xiaoyan has a background in biochemistry and computational biology. She did her PhD in Genetics investigating transcription factor binding dynamics and 3D co-localisation in mammalian genome, using a combination of biophysical modelling and chromatin contact map analysis. Xiaoyan joined Prof. E. D. Laue's group in Oct 2017 to further her research on chromosome organisation in single nucleus.

Ben is an experimental biologist interested in the molecular and cellular processes that drive the elongation of the vertebrate body axis. His current work focusses on assessing the role of gene expression heterogeneity in the maintenance of a bipotent stem cell population termed 'neuromesodermal progenitors' that generate both neural and mesodermal progenitors as the body axis extends. He is particularly interested in how divergent cellular behaviours are generated by seemingly conserved signal and gene regulatory networks across a range of vertebrate species.

Vikas joined the Department of Genetics as a Herchel Smith Fellow in 2016, coming from California Institute of Technology (Caltech, USA) where he did a PhD in Bioengineering. An engineer by training and with expertise in developmental biology, computational modeling and modern microscopy, he is interested in understanding the interplay of mechanical forces and chemical signaling that drive the beautiful self-assembly of cells to shape a developing embryo. He loves teaching and enjoys discussions across disciplines.