People

Emerita Professor Carrie Ambler, Department of Biosciences & CSO LightOX

Areas of Expertise: Animal Cells and Systems 

Research Interests:

• Collaborative, multi-disciplinary approaches to tackling wound repair, cancer and antimicrobial resistance.

Dr Keith Andrews, Department of Chemistry

Areas of Expertise: Organic synthesis, supramolecular chemistry, enzyme mimics, organocatalysis, kinetics, computational design

Research Interests

• Electric field catalysis
• dynamics in catalysis
• organic cages
• organic mechanism & kinetics
• self-assembly, catalyst design sensors

Dr Amir Atapour-Abarghouei, Department of Computer Science

Areas of Expertise: Artificial intelligence and machine learning; computer vision; robotics and autonomous systems; bio-inspired and neuromorphic sensing; multimodal behavioural analysis; AI for biological and environmental monitoring; trustworthy and efficient embedded AI.

Research Interests

• Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning
• Computer Vision and Image Analysis
• Bio-inspired and Neuromorphic Computing
• Robotics and Autonomous Systems
• Biological and Behavioural Monitoring;
• AI for Ecology, Biodiversity and Pollinator Monitoring
• Biomedical and Medical Imaging
• Biosignal Analysis and Brain-Computer Interfaces
• Efficient and Edge AI; Trustworthy and Robust AI.

Professor Colin Bain, Department of Chemistry

Areas of Expertise: Complex Fluids and Interfaces 

Research Interests

• Colloid and interface science
• Inkjet printing of functional films
• Fundamentals and applications of droplet drying

Dr Robert Banks, Department of Biosciences      

Areas of Expertise: Neurobiology, Structure and Function of Sensory Receptors in Muscle

Research Interests

• Mechanosensory transduction
• The role of synaptic-like vesicles in the sensory endings of mechanoreceptors
• The roles and importance of mitochondria in mechanosensory nerve endings, and why they are so abundant in them
• The structure and function of baroreceptors
• Dioka Therapeutics | Revolutionising Hypertension Treatment for a Healthier Future

Dr Aakash Basu, Department of Biosciences       

Areas of Expertise: Biomolecular Interactions, Genomics, Single-molecule Biophysics 

Research Interests

• Deciphering the mechanical code of the genome and epigenome
• Understanding how sequence-encoded mechanical properties of DNA encode regulatory information

Dr Ulrike Bechtold, Department of Biosciences 

Areas of Expertise: Plant Cell Biology     

Research Interests

• Plant stress responses
• Signalling pathways
• Transcriptional and post-transcriptional regulation
• Post-translational modifications
• Comparative genomics
• Evolution of genomes and quantitative trait architecture

Professor Ulrik Beierholm, Department of Psychology 

Areas of Expertise: Computational Neuroscience             

Research Interests:

• How the nervous system deals with uncertainty, whether in perception, decision making or learning.

Professor Adam Benham, Department of Biosciences    

Areas of Expertise: Cell Biology, Biochemistry, Immunology         

Research Interests

• Oxidative folding of secretory proteins in the Endoplasmic Reticulum 
• Protein chaperone function
• Antigen processing and presentation by the immune system

Dr Alessandro Borghi, Department of Engineering

Area of Expertise: Biomedical Engineering, Biomechanics

Research Interests

• Biomechanics
• Finite Element Analysis
• Biological Tissue Characterisation
• Biomaterials
• Medical Image Processing
• Surgical planning
• Medical Devices
• Machine Learning

Dr Stefan Borsley, Department of Chemistry

Area of Expertise: Supramolecular Chemistry, Nonequilibrium Systems

Research Interests

• Nonequilibrium chemistry
• Ratchet mechanisms
• Compartmentalisation
• Gradient-driven systems

Dr Francesco Boselli, Departments of Biosciences and Engineering

Areas of Expertise: Bioengineering and Biological Physics

Research Interests

• Biological Fluid Mechanics 
• Tissue Mechanics
• Mechanotransduction
• Live Imaging
• Cilia; Embryonic Heart; Inner Ear  

Professor Martin Cann, Department of Biosciences                       

Areas of Expertise: Biochemistry

Research Interests

• Carbon dioxide sensing 
• Bacterial death 

Professor Paul Chazot, Department of Biosciences & Nevrargenics

Areas of Expertise: Neuroscience, Chronic Pain, Pharmacology 

Research Interests:

• Identifying and validating novel drug targets and prodromal bio- and behavioural-markers for a range of common chronic neurological and metabolic pathologies. 
• Multiple clinical and health trials and case studies for Post concussion syndrome, dementia, MND, Parkinsons, MS, ME, endometriosis, chronic pain, contact sport health in progress.

Dr Peter Chivers, Department of Biosciences      

Areas of Expertise: Bioinorganic Chemistry 

Research Interests:

• Molecular determinants of microbial metal homeostasis

Professor Steven Cobb, Department of Chemistry            

Areas of Expertise: Synthetic Chemistry, Peptoid and Peptide Chemistry

Research Interests

• Peptide and peptoid chemistry
• Antimicrobials
• Anticancer
• Bio-organic fluorine chemistry

Dr Vincent Croset, Department of Biosciences   

Areas of Expertise: Neurobiology, (Single-cell) Transcriptomics, Behaviour 

Research Interests:

• Effects of nutritional state and drugs of abuse on neuronal physiology, gene expression and behaviour.

 Dr Avishek Das, Department of Physics

Areas of expertise: Statistical physics, biophysics, information theory, soft matter, rare event sampling, stochastic processes. 

 Research interests: 

• Information processing in living systems through intercoupled mechanical and chemical modes over multiple timescales
• Role of information in biological function
• Optimal design of mechano-chemical motifs in soft matter for information transmission. 

Dr Timothy Davies, Department of Biosciences 

Areas of Expertise: Cell Division 

Research Interests

• Variation in cell division requirements
•  C elegans development
• Cellular mechanics
• Cytoskeletal structure and dynamics 

Professor Paul Denny, Department of Biosciences           

Areas of Expertise: Cell Biology, Parasitology, Lipid Biochemistry               

Research Interests

• Protozoan sphingolipid biosynthesis
• Antileishmanial therapeutic discovery
• Antileishmanial mode of action deconvolution
• Molecular diagnostics for protozoan infections 

Dr Karrera Djoko, Department of Biosciences 

Areas of Expertise: Metals in Biology 

Research Interests

• The impact of metal availability on microbial physiology
• How microbes respond to changing metal availability
• How host organisms influence metal availability to host-associated microbes

Dr David Doupé, Department of Biosciences 

Areas of Expertise: Stem Cells, Developmental Biology, Genetics, Drosophila melanogaster 

Research Interests

• Epithelial stem cell regulation 
• Stem cell live intravital imaging 
• Epithelial homeostasis and ageing 

Professor Suzanne Fielding, Department of Physics         

Areas of Expertise: Soft Condensed Matter Physics, Biological Physics

Research Interests

• Yielding of complex and biological materials
• Biological tissue mechanics
• Biologically active suspensions
• Mechanical metamaterials
• Flow instabilities and flow-induced phase transitions
• Fluid-fluid demixing
• Viscoelastic turbulence
• Soft glassy rheology

Dr Lian Gan, Department of Engineering  

Areas of Expertise: Fluid Mechanics, Vortex Dynamics

Research Interests

• Pulsatile and periodic flows
• Vortex dynamics in cardiovascular system
• Flow structure interaction in cardiovascular system
• 4D flow MR 

Professor John Girkin, Department of Physics    

Areas of Expertise: Advanced Photonics and Optical Technologies 

Research Interests

• Advanced optical microscopy
• Development of microfluidic technologies to study biological systems
• Developing novel non-invasive tools for diagnosis

Dr Tim Hawkins, Department of Biosciences       

Areas of Expertise: Molecular Cell Biology

Research Interests

• Combining high-resolution imaging with mechanical manipulation and modelling in both animal and plants cells
• Characterisation of members of the NET family of plant actin binding proteins which link the actin cytoskeleton to district membrane compartments 

Dr Sarah Heaps, Department of Mathematical Sciences 

Areas of Expertise: Bayesian Modelling and Inference, Bayesian Time-series Analysis             

Research Interests

• multivariate time-series modelling of neuroscience data
• stochastic modelling of time-course metagenomic data
• statistical modelling of crystallization outcomes

Professor Jonathan Heddle, Department of Biosciences                       

Areas of Expertise: Protein Design, DNA Nanotechnology, Nano-robotics, Biotech Commercialization, Vaccine Design,  DNA gyrase, Novel Antibiotics, Bionanoscience,  Biochemistry

Research Interests

• Design and assembly of artificial protein nanostructures
• Natural nanomachines: Investigation of topoisomerases, specifically DNA gyrase
• New antibiotic design
• Programmable biological matter
• Development of DNA-based programmable nanomachines
• Design and testing of hybrid biological nanomachines
• Aging

Dr Jo Hepworth, Department of Biosciences

Areas of Expertise: Plant developmental biology

Research Interests

• Inflorescence patterning
• Gene network responses to temperature
• Automated measurement of plant growth / in silico plants
• In-field experimentation
• Model plants and Brassica crops

Professor David Hodgson, Department of Chemistry           

Areas of Expertise: Physical Organic Chemistry, Synthetic Chemistry.

Research Interests

• Nucleosides and Nucleotides
• Fluorination
• Understanding Reactivity through Kinetics
• Bioconjugation

Dr Ostap Hryniv, Department of Mathematical Sciences

Areas of Expertise: Probability and Stochastic Processes 

Research Interests

• Phase transitions
• Interacting particle systems
• Large deviations
• Stochastic modelling 
• Population dynamics

Dr Raheleh Kafieh, Department of Engineering

Areas of Expertise: Biomedical image and signal processing, Artificial Intelligence

Research Interests

• Medical Data Analysis
• Machine learning / Deep Learning
• Image Processing and Computer Vision
• Data Acquisition and Management
• Time-frequency methods
• Dictionary learning
• Data Quality Assessment

Dr Akis (Iakowos) Karakesisoglou, Department of Biosciences 

Areas of Expertise: Animal Cell Biology, Disease

Research Interests

• Linker of the Nucleoskeleton and Cytoskeleton complex (LINC) cell biology 
• The role of the cytoskeleton and spectrin-family of proteins in cell architecture and disease 
• Breast cancer and skin mechanobiology 
• Breast cancer diagnostics 
• Premature (HGPS) and physiological human ageing (emphasis on skin and epithelial cell biology [RPE, Hepatocyte, breast, intestine]) 
• Laminopathies, nesprinopathies, muscle disorders, motor neuron disease (ALS) and Alzheimer’s 

Professor Ritu Kataky, Department of Chemistry              

Areas of Expertise: Electrochemistry, Sensors  

Research Interests

• Developing sensors and biosensors for environmental, clinical and pharmaceutical monitoring
• Detection and Destruction of Biofilms on soft and hard surfaces

Dr Ciara Keating, Department of Engineering

Area of Expertise: Microbiology, Microbial Ecology, Environmental Engineering, Biotechnology, Bioinformatics

Research Interests

• Environmental Microbiology
• Soil and Plant Health
• Waste Treatment Systems
• Anaerobic microbiology

Professor Ashraf Khir, Department of Engineering

Areas of Expertise: Physiological Fluid Mechanics, Artificial Hearts/ Ventricular Assist Devices (VAD). 

Research Interests

• Arterial waves
• Arterial stiffness – wave speed - PWV
• Non-invasive physiological hemodynamic ultrasound measurements
• Wave intensity analysis (WIA)
• Arterial wall mechanics
• Intra-Aortic Balloon Pump (IABP)
• Design of continuous and pulsatile flow blood pumps
• Mock circulatory loops

Dr Matthew Kitching, Department of Chemistry 

Areas of Expertise: Synthetic Chemistry, Supramolecular Chemistry & Functional Molecules 

Research Interests

• Enantioselective Synthesis of Chiral Ammonium Centres
• Smart droplets

Professor Heather Knight, Department of Biosciences    

Areas of Expertise: Molecular Plant Cell Biology 

Research Interests

• The roles of genes in the model plant Arabidopsis thaliana that determine the plant’s level of tolerance to freezing stress
• Physical and mechanical properties of plants that determine freezing resistance
• Cell wall polymer biochemistry and structural biology
• le nucleation

Professor Marc Knight, Department of Biosciences          

Areas of Expertise: Plant Molecular Cell Biology, Plant Signalling                

Research Interests:

• How stress information is encoded in calcium responses and how this is decoded by plants to produce the appropriate survival response and small molecule biostimulants for agriculture.

Dr Andrew Krause, Department of Mathematical Sciences           

Areas of Expertise: Mathematical and Computational Modelling 

Research Interests

• Pattern formation in developmental biology 
• Reaction-diffusion systems 
• Spatial population dynamics 
• Nonlinear dynamical systems 

Dr Alison Lane, Department of Psychology          

Areas of Expertise: Clinical Neuropsychology 

Research Interests

• Perception
• Neurorehabilitation 
• Visuospatial attention 

Dr Ting-Yu Lin, Department of Biosciences

Areas of Expertise: Structural Biology, Biochemistry, Molecular Biology

Research Interests

• Structural and biochemical analyses of pseudouridine synthases
• RNA modification
• RNA Biology 

Professor Keith Lindsey, Department of Biosciences       

Areas of Expertise: Plant Molecular Cell Biology, Plant Signalling 

Research Interests:

• Identification of plant intracellular signalling molecules - roots and development 

Dr Junli Liu, Department of Biosciences 

Areas of Expertise: Systems biology  

Research Interests:

• Hormone and Calcium Signalling in Plants. 

Dr Clare Mahon, Department of Chemistry         

Areas of Expertise: Polymer Chemistry, Molecular Recognition, Biological Chemistry 

Research Interests

• Development of sensors and diagnostics for bacterial disease 
• Design of polymeric materials for use in biomedicine 
• Improving understanding of biodegradation 

Professor Alistair McGregor, Department of Biosciences

Areas of Expertise: Evolutionary Developmental Biology, Animal Cells and Systems 

Research Interests

• Genetic regulation of development, 
• Morphological evolution in animals, 
• Genome evolution and duplicated gene fate, 
• The evolution and specificity of Wnt ligands 

Dr Liz Morris, Department of Biosciences             

Areas of Expertise: Structural biology, Biophysics, Biochemistry, Virology 

Research Interests

• Enzyme mechanisms
• Protein-protein and protein-nucleotide interactions involved in virus replication 

Dr Billy Moses Jr., Department of Computer Science

Area of Expertise: Theoretical foundations of distributed computing  

Research Interests

• Distributed algorithms
• Biologically inspired computing
• Peer to Peer networks
• Movement and computing, especially involving mobile agents on a graph

Dr Patricia Muller, Department of Biosciences 

Areas of Expertise: Biochemistry, Metalloproteins, p53, Cancer, Cell Engulfment   

Research Interests

• Role of metals in regulating p53 function
• Mutant p53 function in cancer 

Professor Marko Nardini, Department of Psychology     

Areas of Expertise: Visual and multisensory perception 

Research Interests

• Perceptual and Cognitive development
• Perception with New Sensory Signals

Professor AnnMarie O'Donoghue, Department of Chemistry 

Areas of Expertise: Physical Organic Chemistry, Catalysis, Synthesis, Kinetics and mechanism, Kinetic acidity and pKa determination 

Research Interests

• Synthetic organocatalysis and biocatalysis 
• Mechanistic studies of organocatalysis and biocatalysis 
• Enzyme mechanisms 
• Synthesis and applications of stable organic radicals 

Dr Lars-Olof Pålsson, Department of Chemistry 

Areas of Expertise: Chemical physics, Biophysics 

Research Interests

• Sensing surfaces based on fluorescent Langmuir-Blodgett films 
• Electronic energy transfer in photosynthetic systems 

Dr Denis Patterson, Department of Mathematical Sciences 

Area of Expertise: Nonlinear Dynamics, Stochastic Analysis, and Mathematical Modelling

Research Interests

• Mathematical Ecology: Vegetation Models
• Mathematical Modelling: Developmental Biology
• Mathematical Epidemiology: Malaria 

Dr Marianna Pepona, Department of Mathematical Sciences    

Areas of Expertise: Biological fluid dynamics

Research Interests:

• Development of mathematical and computational techniques to study phenomena involving biological fluids and their interaction with structures, i.e. cells, vessel walls, etc.

Professor Bernard Piette, Department of Mathematical Sciences              

Areas of Expertise: Mathematical Physics and Biophysics 

Research Interests

• Mathematical modelling of biological systems
• Geometries of nano-bio-materials 
• Electron-phonon interaction in nano-systems 

Professor Ehmke Pohl, Departments of Biosciences and Chemistry & Nevrargenics

Areas of Expertise: Structural Biology 

Research Interests

• Structure-based drug design focusing in infectious diseases
• High-throughput screening for drug discovery

Professor Christopher Prior, Department of Mathematical Sciences       

Areas of Expertise: Magnetohydrodynamics, Topological Constraints 

Research Interests

• Magnetohydrodynamics
• Solar physics
• Protein dynamics
• Biological filament elasticity and topological constraints

Professor Stefan Przyborski, Department of Biosciences & Reprocell

Areas of Expertise: Bioengineering Human Tissues, Development and Translation of Advanced Cell Technologies, Cell and Tissue Differentiation in Health and Disease, 3Rs – Developing Alternatives for Animals in Research 

Research Interests

• Human cell culture and building tissue equivalents 
• Design and application of cell culture plasticware 
• Bioreactor development and construction 
• Device design and prototyping 
• Cell and tissue differentiation methods 
• Cell / tissue imaging and molecular analysis 
• Commercialisation of technology and company development/operation 
• Working at the industrial interface 

Dr Lena Riabinina, Department of Biosciences                       

Areas of Expertise: Neuroscience, Genetics, Sensory Ecology, Food Security

Research Interests

• Mosquito olfactory neurobiology
• Mosquito vision 
• Plant-pollinator interactions
• Bumblebee olfactory neurobiology and ecology
• Olfaction of Black soldier flies
• Development of genetic tools for insects

Professor Ari Sadanandom, Department of Biosciences 

Areas of Expertise: Molecular Plant Sciences 

Research Interests:

• Polypeptide tags: Protein Modification systems such as Small Ubiquitin-like MOdifiers (SUMO) and their roles in plants' resilience under a changing climate. 

Dr Vatsal Sanjay, Department of Physics

Areas of Expertise: Computational Multiphase Physics, Soft Matter

Research Interests

• Digital twins of biological systems
• Soft Matter Singularities
• Non-Newtonian Flows as the `Drosophila' of Continuum Mechanics
• Viscous Free-Surface Flows
• Active hydrodynamics

Dr Rebecca Senior, Department of Biosciences  

Areas of Expertise: Conservation, Ecology, Quantitative Tools & Technology

Research Interests:

• The use of quantitative tools and technology to understand the drivers of biodiversity loss.
• Biogeography/spatial ecology 

Dr Gary Sharples, Department of Biosciences     

Areas of Expertise: Microbiology, Biochemistry, Molecular Biology

Research Interests

• Antibacterial mechanism of action of chelating agents, clay minerals, antibacterial surfaces and other novel antibacterial compounds.
• Bacteriophage recombinases

Professor Margarita Staykova, Department of Physics  

Areas of Expertise: Biophysics, Biological Membranes, Functional Interfaces, Living Materials 

Research Interests

• The mechano-sensitive architecture and composition of the cell interface
• Cell-cell adhesion, encapsulation
• Bio-hybrid systems
• Bacterial growth 
• Bioelectricity

Professor Patrick Steel, Department of Chemistry

Areas of Expertise: Synthetic Chemistry, Chemical Biology 

Research Interests

• Synthesis and Application of Boronic Acids 
• Fragment based Drug Discovery 
• Chemical Probes 
• plant chemical biology - plant hormonal signalling pathways and crop protection agents 
• Parasite chemical biology: leishmaniasis and T. cruzi

Dr Lore Thaler, Department of Psychology           

Areas of Expertise: Human Psychophysics, Psychoacoustics, Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) 

Research Interests

• Sensory neuroplasticity 
• Blindness 
• Human echolocation 

Dr Adam Townsend, Department of Mathematical Sciences        

Areas of Expertise: Applied & Computational Mathematics, Mathematical Biology 

Research Interests

• Development of mathematical and computational techniques to investigate complex fluids  
• Non-Newtonian fluid mechanics 

Dr Sergii Veremieiev, Department of Engineering

Areas of Expertise: Fluid Mechanics, Microscale Flows, Biofuels. 

Research Interests

• Biological flows
• droplet dynamics and wetting on surfaces
• micro- and multiphase flows
• thermochemical conversion of biomass
• bioenergy and biofuels. 

Professor Kislon Voitchovsky, Department of Physics     

Areas of Expertise: Biological Physics, Experimental Soft Matter 

Research Interests

• Solid-liquid and soft interfaces at the nanoscale
• Interfacial phenomena 
• Ionic effects 
• Emergence of mesoscale order

Professor David Weinkove, Department of Biosciences & Magnitude Biosciences

Areas of Expertise: Animal Cells and Systems, Ageing, Microbiome, Automated Analysis of Ageing

Research Interests:

• Study of the nematode worm Caenorhabditis elegans to gain insights into basic biological processes such as ageing and host:microbe interactions.

Professor Darren Wilkinson, Department of Mathematical Sciences

Area of Expertise: Bayesian Statistical Inference and Computational Systems Biology

Research Interests

• Computational approaches to inference and inverse problems
• Molecular systems biology modelling and inference
• Stochasticity and heterogeneity in (model) biological systems
• Advanced statistical modelling and machine learning for big data problems in (meta)genomics

Dr Chris Willcocks, Department of Computer Science     

Areas of Expertise: Computer Science 

Research Interests: Deep generative modelling, such as diffusion probabilistic models and normalising flows, with applications in unpaired domain translation, anomaly detection, physics, biology and chemistry.

Professor J.A. Gareth Williams, Department of Chemistry            

Areas of Expertise: Synthetic Chemistry, Metal Complexes, Luminescence and Bio-imaging 

Research Interests

• Luminescent sensors for bioactive ions and molecules in solution 
• New sensors for magnesium ions with improved selectivity over calcium 
• Development of new chelating agents based on naturally occurring siderophores 
• Phosphorescent molecules for visible and NIR-light-emitting devices