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Kings College London

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Department of Mathematical Sciences, University of Bath

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Professor at the Department of Biochemistry, University of Cambridge

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Naughty neighbours and common but "atypical" mechanisms of AMR 

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Naughty neighbours and common but "atypical" mechanisms of AMR 

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Biozentrum, University of Basel

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Eugene Higgins Professor of Molecular Biophysics, Yale University

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Professor of Developmental Neurobiology, Kings College London

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Co-Director of the Sir Howard Dalton Centre,

Professor of Chemistry and Life Sciences, University of Warwick

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'Molecular Dynamics of Bacterial Cell Envelopes: From Biogenesis to Resistance

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'Molecular Dynamics of Bacterial Cell Envelopes: From Biogenesis to Resistance

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Institute for Molecular Bioscience, The University of Queensland

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Faculty of Life Sciences, University of Manchester

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Cell signalling and gene expression

dynamics during development

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Altos Labs - Cambridge Institute of Science

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Plasmid Biology and Evolution Lab, Centro Nacional de Biotecnología – CSIC, Madrid

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How molecular motors drive the motility of cilia and flagella

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How molecular motors drive the motility of cilia and flagella

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Biochemistry Department, University of Oxford

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The Rudolf Peierls Centre for Theoretical Physics, University of Oxford

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Hubrecht Institute, Developmental Biology & Stem Cell Research

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Faculty of Medicine, Institute of Clinical Sciences, Imperial College London

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Epigenetic memory and the germline cycle: the tales of erasure, maintenance and stability

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Epigenetic memory and the germline cycle: the tales of erasure, maintenance and stability

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Department of Physics, University of Oxford

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Imaging-driven bacteriology: from single molecules to AMR detection

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Imaging-driven bacteriology: from single molecules to AMR detection

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Max Planck Institute for Brain Research, Frankfurt, Germany

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Erin Schuman was born in 1963 in San Gabriel, California (USA), and obtained her Bachelor’s degree from the University of Southern California and her Ph.D. in Neuroscience from Princeton University. Schuman carried out her postdoctoral work in Molecular and Cellular Physiology at Stanford University. In 1993 she joined the Biology faculty at the California Institute of Technology.  In 1997 she was also appointed as an investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. In 2009 she was recruited as a founding director of the Max Planck Institute for Brain Research and moved to Frankfurt, Germany, where she heads the Department of Synaptic Plasticity.

She is an elected member of EMBO, the German Academy of Sciences Leopoldina, the US National Academy of Sciences, and of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. She received the Louis-Jeantet Prize for Medicine, the FENS-Kavli-ALBA Diversity Prize, the EMBO Women in Science Award, the Rosenstiel Award, and the Brain Prize. Schuman’s major contribution to science has been to understand how proteins are supplied to brain cells, particularly in their axons and dendrites.

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Wellcome-MRC Cambridge Stem Cell Institute, University of Cambridge

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Enhancer Resetting: How chromatin translates signals into transcription

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Enhancer Resetting: How chromatin translates signals into transcription

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Brian Hendrich received his PhD from Stanford University working on X chromosome inactivation with Huntington Willard. He joined the lab of Adrian Bird at the University of Edinburgh for postdoctoral work and participated in the discovery and characterisation of a family of methyl-CpG binding proteins in mammals. In 2001 he started his own laboratory at the University of Edinburgh. In 2008 he moved to the Wellcome Trust Centre for Stem Cell Research in Cambridge. He is currently a Principal Research Associate and Director of the PhD Programme in Stem Cell Biology and Medicine for the Cambridge Stem Cell Institute. He can often be found cycling the roads of East Anglia, in search of a hill.

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Astbury Centre for Structural Molecular Biology,

University of Leeds

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Sticky Misfolds: How Amyloid Formation Fuels Disease

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Sticky Misfolds: How Amyloid Formation Fuels Disease

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King's College London

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Corinne Houart is Professor of Developmental Neurobiology, MRC Centre for Neurodevelopmental Disorders and Vice Dean Research of the Faculty of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience. She is on the editorial board of leading developmental biology journals, board member of funding bodies, EMBO member and recipient of the MRC Suffrage Science Award. Prof. Houart got her PhD at the University of Brussels in 1992, working on gene regulation in cancer. She dedicated her postdoctoral training to exploring early forebrain development in zebrafish, at the University of Oregon in the USA, the then epicentre of zebrafish genetics. She started her own lab in 2002, at King’s College London. Her team unveiled key mechanisms of fate specification shaping forebrain regionalisation and is currently identifying the evolutionary aspects of these early decisions. They aim to understand the signalling integration controlling telencephalic across species using animals and 3D cell culture. Her group developed more recently a second research direction, using original approaches to understand local mRNA regulation driving neuronal maturation. Both research directions led to findings opening therapeutic avenues for neurodevelopmental and neurodegenerative disorders

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The Wellcome Trust Genome Campus, Cambridge

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Beatson Institute in Glasgow

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“Learning from genetic disorders: A cytoplasmic version of FoxG1 transcription factor drives local decisions in neurons ”

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“Learning from genetic disorders: A cytoplasmic version of FoxG1 transcription factor drives local decisions in neurons ”

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We are interested in the signalling pathways that coordinate and regulate gene expression, and how dysregulation of these pathways is a cause or consequence of disease. Our aim is to use this knowledge to develop and refine therapeutic approaches. Our focus is on the RNA cap, a structure found on pre-mRNA and non-coding RNA that directs RNA synthesis and recruits factors involved in processing and translation. A series of RNA capping enzymes catalyses cap formation, predominantly as the transcript is being synthesised. We are interested in how these RNA capping enzymes are regulated during development and in the adult, and the impact that this has on gene expression. Currently, we are investigating RNA cap regulation in during neuron differentiation and function, during T cell activation and following oncogene dysregulation in cancer models.

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Nobel Laureate                Prof Richard Henderson 

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Nobel Laureate                Prof Richard Henderson 

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MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology, Cambridge University.

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Imperial College London

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Prof Molly M Stevens FREng FRS is Professor of Biomedical Materials and Regenerative Medicine and the Research Director for Biomedical Material Sciences in the Department of Materials, in the Department of Bioengineering and the Institute of Biomedical Engineering at Imperial College London.

Prof Stevens’ multidisciplinary research balances the investigation of fundamental science with the development of technology to address some of the major healthcare challenges. Her work has been instrumental in elucidating the bio-material interfaces. She has created a broad portfolio of designer biomaterials for applications in disease diagnostics and regenerative medicine. Her substantial body of work influences research groups around the world (>380 publications, h-index 86, >30k citations, 2018 Clarivate Analytics Highly Cited Researcher in Cross-Field research).

Prof. Stevens holds numerous leadership positions including Director of the UK Regenerative Medicine Platform "Smart Acellular Materials" Hub and Deputy Director of the EPSRC IRC in Early-Warning Sensing Systems for Infectious Diseases.

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Designing the biomaterial interface for therapeutics and biosensing

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Designing the biomaterial interface for therapeutics and biosensing

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This talk will provide an overview of our recent developments in bio-instructive, self-assembling and gradient materials for applications in regenerative medicine with focus on establishing translational pipelines to bring our innovations to the clinic [1]. I will present how we are using remote fields to engineer complex 3D architectures that mimic anisotropic and multiscale tissue structures and generate spatially arranged bioinstructive biochemical cues, such as acoustic stimulation to produce engineered muscle with bundles of aligned fibres [2]. I will discuss recent developments in our tunable nanoneedle arrays for multiplexed intracellular biosensing at sub-cellular resolution and modulation of biological processes [3], and will talk about our portfolio of nanoparticle-based sensing probes for diagnosing and monitoring infectious and non-communicable diseases with integration to smartphone technology for mHealth approaches [4, 5]. Finally, I will present our advances in Raman spectroscopy characterisation techniques for high-throughput label-free characterization of single nanoparticles (SPARTA™) which is becoming an integral tool for the design of advanced nanotherapeutics [6].

[1] J. P. K. Armstrong… M. M. Stevens. “A blueprint for translational regenerative medicine.” Science Translational Medicine. 2020. 12(572): eaaz2253.

[2] J. P. K. Armstrong,… M. M. Stevens. “Engineering anisotropic muscle tissue using acoustic cell patterning.” Advanced Materials. 30(43): 1802649.

[3] C. Chiappini…  M. M. Stevens, E. Tasciotti. “Biodegradable silicon nanoneedles delivering nucleic acids intracellularly induce localized in vivo neovascularization.” Nature Materials. 2015. 14: 532

[4] C. N. Loynachan… M. M. Stevens. “Renal clearable catalytic gold nanoclusters for in vivo disease monitoring.” Nature Nanotechnology. 2019. 14: 883–890.

[5] C. S. Wood, … M. M. Stevens. “Taking connected mobile-health diagnostics of infectious diseases to the field.” Nature. 2019. 566: 467-474.

[6] J. Penders… M. Stevens. “Single particle automated Raman trapping analysis.” Nature Communications. 2018, 9: 4256.

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Department of Neurodegenerative Disease
University College London

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Selina Wray is a Professor of Molecular Neuroscience and  Alzheimer's Research UK Senior Research Fellow in the Department of Neurodegenerative Disease at UCL Queen Square Institute of Neurology.

Selina received her degree in Biochemistry and Biological Chemistry from the University of Nottingham in 2004, before undertaking PhD training in Dr Diane Hanger’s laboratory at the Institute of Psychiatry, Kings College London.  Selina was awarded her PhD in 2008 and subsequently joined the laboratory of Professor John Hardy at UCL Queen Square Institute of Neurology before eventually setting up her own lab at UCL.

Selina’s work is focussed on the use of induced pluripotent stem cell (iPSC) technology to model dementia,  working closely with clinical colleagues to obtain samples from participants with rare, genetic forms of dementia and using these to understand the molecular basis of Alzheimer's Disease and Frontotemporal Dementia. In recognition of her research and public engagement, Selina was awarded the 2018 ARUK David Hague Early Career Investigator of the Year award and the 2014 Red Magazine Woman of the Year award in the Pioneer category.

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Human stem cell models of Alzheimer’s disease and frontotemporal dementia

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Human stem cell models of Alzheimer’s disease and frontotemporal dementia

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The development of human induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSC) and their subsequent differentiation into neurons has provided new opportunities for the generation of physiologically-relevent in vitro disease models.  I will present our work using iPSC to modal familial Alzheimer's Disease (fAD) and Frontotemporal Dementia (FTD).  We have investigated the mutation-specific effects of APP and PSEN1 mutations on Abeta generation in neurons generated from individuals with fAD, revealing distinct mechanisms that may contribute to clinical heterogeneity in disease.  I will also discuss our  work to understand the developmental and pathological changes to tau that occur in iPSC-neurons, particularly the challenges of understanding tau pathology in a developmental system, tau proteostasis and how iPSC-neurons may help us identify early signatures of tau pathology in disease.

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Div of Biosciences
University College London

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Professor of Epigenomics at the University of Exeter Medical School

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MRC Laboratory of
Molecular Biology Cambridge

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Dynamics of Living Systems
Collège de France

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Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, New York

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Wellcome-MRC
Cambridge Stem Cell Institute
University of Cambridge

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Joo-Hyeon Lee is a Wellcome Senior Fellow and a Group Leader at the Wellcome - MRC
Cambridge Stem Cell Institute, University of Cambridge. Her group focuses on
understanding how stem and progenitor cells regulate their fate behaviours to specify and
maintain tissues. They ask fundamental questions involving how stem cells sense
environmental changes and determine their cell fate, and how niches develop and remodel
the local environment during lung regeneration and the early stages of disease progression.
Joo-Hyeon was awarded a Wellcome Sir Henry Dale Fellowship, a ERC starting grant, and a
Suh Kyungbae Foundation Young Investigator award.

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Harvard University

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Andrew Murray received his Ph.D. from Harvard, working with Jack Szostak to construct artificial chromosomes. His postdoctoral work, with Mark Kirschner at UCSF, showed that cyclin synthesis and destruction regulates the cell division cycle.

From 1989 to 2000, Murray was on the faculty of the Physiology department at UCSF. Since joining Harvard’s Molecular and Cellular Biology department he has directed the Bauer Fellows Program and the FAS Center for Systems Biology. He currently directs three fellows programs (John Harvard Distinguished Science Fellows, MathBio Fellows, Rowland Fellows), heads LS50, Integrated Science, a full-year double class that introduces a group of dedicated freshmen to the natural sciences, codirects the Systems, Synthetic, and Quantitative Biology PhD program, and is the Director for Graduate Programs in the Natural Sciences within FAS.

His group works on three subjects using the budding yeast, Saccharomyces cerevisiae: 1) chromosome behavior during mitosis and meiosis, 2) how cells adapt to fluctuating environments, and 3) experimental evolution. They use genetic and physiological perturbations, synthetic biology, and collaborations with theorists to understand the “rules of the game” by which cells reproduce, respond to their environment, and evolve. In education, he is interested in breaking interdisciplinary barriers without sacrificing discipline.

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The engineering and evolution of a multicellular life cycle in brewer’s yeast

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The engineering and evolution of a multicellular life cycle in brewer’s yeast

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Department of Biochemistry,
University of Oxford

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Xist RNA function in X chromosome inactivation

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Xist RNA function in X chromosome inactivation

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Wnt-signaling regulation: non-ciliary functions of ciliary proteins in the Wnt pathways

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Wnt-signaling regulation: non-ciliary functions of ciliary proteins in the Wnt pathways

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Vicky Cowling is a group leader at the Cancer Research UK Scotland Institute (Beatson), Glasgow.  Her research team investigates how modification of RNA by the addition of methylated cap structures impacts on gene expression. RNA cap regulation can have potent impacts on the cell by co-regulating specific families of genes with related functions, thereby directing cell function and fate decisions. The Cowling lab also works with the Cancer Research Horizons and Dundee Drug Discovery Unit to develop strategies to interfere with RNA cap formation and function with the aim of suppressing tumour cell growth and immune cell function. The lab is predominantly funded by the European Research Council (ERC), Wellcome Trust and Cancer Research UK.

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Professor Dame Janet Thornton is a research scientist. She is widely credited, alongside others, with the establishment of the new field of Bioinformatics.  She graduated in physics before completing her PhD in Biophysics. After research at Oxford University, Birkbeck College and UCL, she became Director of EMBL's European Bioinformatics Institute in Hinxton, Cambridge from 2001 – 2015. During this time, she led the establishment of ELIXIR - the ESFRI distributed infrastructure for life sciences information. Today, as Director Emeritus at EMBL-EBI, she works on proteins, especially enzymes, and the impact of variants on diseases. Professor Dame Janet is a Fellow of the Royal Society, a member of the European Molecular Biology Organisation as well as a foreign association of the US National Academy of Sciences.  She has combined her research with many advisory roles, including serving as Vice President of the European Research Council (2018-2020).

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Clinical & Biomedical Sciences, University of Exeter

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Department of Computational and Systems Biology at the John Innes Centre

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Martin Howard originally trained as a theoretical physicist, receiving his D. Phil. in 1996 from Oxford University. As a postdoc in Copenhagen, Vancouver and Leiden he then worked for several years on statistical physics. His interests then shifted towards biology and its interface with physics. Following the award of a Royal Society University Research Fellowship, Martin moved to the Department of Mathematics, Imperial College London, where he stayed for nearly 5 years as a lecturer and then reader. In 2007, he moved to the Department of Computational and Systems Biology at the John Innes Centre as a professor and in 2020 was made an honorary group leader at the Babraham and Gurdon Institutes, Cambridge. In the past he has worked on topics as diverse as cell size control, cell division positioning and metabolic resource allocation. A central focus of his current research is the mechanistic basis of epigenetic memory, fusing simple theoretical models with quantitative experimental data, where he has forged long lasting collaborations with experimental colleagues. He has focused particularly on understanding Polycomb-based switching and memory, but also memory in the context of DNA methylation dynamics. In 2022 he was awarded the Institute of Physics Rosalind Franklin Medal and Prize for his fundamental application of concepts from statistical physics to molecular biology. He was also the conference chair for the recent Physics of Life 2023 meeting in Harrogate.

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Dissecting the mechanistic basis of epigenetic memory using theory and experiments

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Dissecting the mechanistic basis of epigenetic memory using theory and experiments

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Prof Stefano Pagliara

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University of Oxford, Physical & Theoretical Chemistry Laboratory

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Engineering new interneurons through in vivo glia-to-neuron lineage conversion

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Engineering new interneurons through in vivo glia-to-neuron lineage conversion

# data[].attributes.headline
Tracing the Dynamics of Stem Cell Fate Directed by Niches

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Tracing the Dynamics of Stem Cell Fate Directed by Niches

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Altos Labs - Cambridge Institute of Science

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Thomas Lecuit is a group leader at IBDM in Marseille and studies the biophysical principles of cell and tissue morphogenesis. He is founding director of the Turing Centre for Living Systems, an interdisciplinary centre studying the complexity and self-organization in biology. He is a Professor at the Collège de France in Paris, chair “Dynamics of Living Systems”, an elected member of the EMBO, French Académie des Sciences and Academia Europaea.

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Jonathan is Professor of Epigenomics at the University of Exeter Medical School where he heads the Complex Disease Epigenomics Group and is co-head of the Department of Clinical and Biomedical Sciences. He graduated with a degree in Human Sciences from Oxford University, where he took a particular interest in cannibalism, before undertaking his PhD in psychiatric genetics at the MRC Social, Genetic & Developmental Psychiatry Research Centre at the Institute of Psychiatry, King's College London. After spending three years as a Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) postdoctoral fellow at the University of Toronto, he returned to the Institute of Psychiatry to establish the Psychiatric Epigenetics group. He was appointed as Professor of Epigenomics at the University of Exeter in September 2012.