Alumni of the lab
Scott Waddell
After a very successful MRC HGU PhD shared with the Boulter lab, Scott’s continues to work on characterising the role of primary cilia in liver homeostasis and polycystic liver disease (PLD) and cancer. Scott’s first author work A TGFβ-ECM-integrin signaling axis drives structural reconfiguration of the bile duct to promote polycystic liver disease was recently published in Sci Trans Medicine where his stunning imaging nabbed the cover! He has recently been awarded an independent CSO fellowship to continue to explore how cilia control tissue biomechanics, inflammation and cystic growth.
Girish Mali
University of Edinburgh PhD graduate whose thesis work focused on novel genes involved cytoplasmic dynein preassembly. Girish was a postdoc investigating the dynein assembly pathway using biochemical and structural biology methods in the lab of Andrew Carter at the MRC LMB. Check out Girish’s stunning pre-print on a novel factor involved the the delivery and docking of three-headed ODAs- Shulin packages axonemal outer dynein arms for ciliary targeting. Girish has recently moved his own independent group to the Dunn School University of Oxford!
.
Tooba Quidwai
Tooba was completed her PHD as part of the Edinburgh Super Resolution Imaging Consortium (ESRIC) program. Following her expertise in super-resolution imaging at EMBL in the Ries lab, Tooba came to the MRC HGU use advanced imaging methods to understand cilia dynamics specifically intraflagellar transport pathway in mammalian cells. She was awarded an EMBO short-term fellowship to go to the Pigino lab MPI CBG (Dresden) for EM tomography to identify novel coated vesicles. She did a short post doc with Yanick Crow (IGMM), before heading to UMASS where she did postdocs in the Witman and Nandadasa labs.
Rob Foster
MRC IGMM PhD graduate who developed a reporter system for monitoring and quantitating different outcomes of genome editing in real time and space, towards developing robust and reproducible protocols for somatic genome editing therapies for airway diseases. He did a brief postdoc with David FitzPatrick (HGU) before landing a permanent R&D technical post within Edinburgh Genomics.
Elena joined the lab as a Biomedical Sciences Masters in Research candidate where she developed genome editing-based strategies in our models of primary ciliary dyskinesia (PCD). She just started as a joint PhD candidate in the lab of Urszula McClurg (Liverpool) and Wee Wei (A* Signapore) September 2019.
Melissa Jungnickel
After helping us establish genome editing in the postnatal eye, Melissa continues her odyssey in genome editing across town at Roslin in a very high-throughput manner.
Melinda Van Kerckvoorde
Melinda was awarded a BSCB Summer Studentship to come to the lab to explore how cilia content with cell cycle but 2020 had other plans! Instead she worked with Pleasantine and Richard Mort (Lancaster) to develop new scripts for image analysis of Arl13bCerulean-Fucci2a biosensor, which we are writing up as a Methods chapter. She is off to Cambridge to study for a MPhil in Developmental Biology.
Manon Rivagorda
The immensely talented Manon joined the lab for a summer as an ERAMUS internship from University Paris Diderot. She completed her PhD in Franck Oury’s lab at the Necker Institute in Paris studying the physiological role of autophagy and cilia in regulation of cognition in healthy and aging brain.
Margaret Keighren
Transgenic technologist. Magic hands and microinjection-meister retired in April 2019.
Tom Gutman
An ERASMUS internship student from University Paris Diderot, Tom was using genome editing in zebrafish to model human ciliopathy disease candidates. He is currently doing a master's degree in Bioinformatics in Université Paris VII Diderot.