Present position: The Boss (Wellcome Trust Research Career Development Fellow)

Irene left sunny Barcelona for a PhD at Oxford University in 1997. In Prof. Kay Davies's lab, she discovered the joys of the fly while modelling the neurodegenerative disease spinal muscular atrophy in invertebrates. After graduating in 2001, she moved to Harvard to join Prof. Stefan Thor's lab to study neuronal specification in the Drosophila ventral nerve cord, and briefly relocated with him to Sweden until the winter of 2004, only to decide that it was too cold and she missed the rain. Back in London, she continued her postdoctoral work and developed her current research interests in Dr. Alex Gould's lab as a Marie Curie Fellow. She started this lab in 2008.

Present position: Postdoc

Daniel did his PhD with Fernando J.Díaz-Benjumea in the Centro de Biología Molecular (CSIC-UAM) in Madrid, investigating the proximal-distal development of Drosophila´s wing disc. He recently joined the lab, where his wing discs have been replaced by nervous systems. Daniel is interested in the specification of visceral neurons.

Present position: Research Assistant

Christo got his MSc in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology from the University of Sofia in the early nineties. He worked in the Department of Biochemistry until 2000, when he moved to Cambridge and started working as Research Assistant in Dr Torsten Krude’s group in the Department of Zoology funded by a Wellcome Trust Value in People Award, Cancer Research UK, Human Frontier Science Program (HFSP) and Amersham Pharmacia Biotech. He has investigated the replication of chromosomal DNA in proliferating human somatic cells, focusing on the regulation of the initiation step of this process. Christo has moved recently to the Development and Neurobiology field with the intention to learn more about this new topic and try to be useful with his previous experience.

Present position: PhD Student, BBSRC

Paola studied Biotechnology in Bologna and Milan but saw the light at her first Developmental Biology course. She worked in Prof. Antonello Mallamaci's cerebral cortex development lab for her undergraduate degree, researching boundary patterning events in mouse forebrain. In her search for a PhD position, she was lured away from mammalian brains to insect guts and joined the Miguel-Aliaga lab as an RA in August 2008, continuing as a PhD student from October 2009. She currently contributes to the lab with attempts at biological art, web design and occasional science. Her main scientific interest is the regulation and outcome of gut function.

Present position: PhD Student, Wellcome Trust four-year developmental biology PhD programme

Gerit graduated from the university of Freiburg in 2008. During his thesis he worked in Prof. Karl-Friedrich Fischbach lab about cell adhesion molecules. In the course of his degree he furthermore visited Dietmar Schmucker's lab in Boston to work on DSCAM. In October 2008 Gerit finally left the black forest to start his PhD in Cambridge funded by the 4 yr Wellcome Trust PhD programme. During his rotations he worked apart from our lab also with Eric Miska on microRNAs and with Sarah Bray and Boris Adryan on regulating the Notch pathway. In October 2009 he decided to stick to Drosophila visceral research and join the lab to work on the developmental interactions between the nervous and digestive system.

Visiting and temporary members

• Tomoki Otani - Wellcome Trust Developmental Biology PhD rotation student
• Ted Pynegar - Zoology Part II student, University of Cambridge

Past Members

• Antoine Ducuing - Visiting student, Ecole Normale Superieure de Lyon
• Nisha Anjali Dave - Zoology Part II student, University of Cambridge
• Ana Terriente-Felix - Postdoc
• John Dereix - Zoology Part II student, University of Cambridge
• Jenny Clarke - Summer student