Luca carried out his Ph.D research in the laboratory of Matthias Carl at Heidelberg University in Germany where he studied the establishment of left-right neuronal asymmetries in the embryonic brain. He next joined Caroline Hill’s laboratory at the Francis Crick Institute in London. There, by implementing transcriptomics and quantitative imaging approaches, he explored how morphogen gradients control cell fate specification and morphogenesis in the early embryo. He aims now to combine these expertise with the use of brain organoids to uncover evolutionary aspects underlying morphogenesis of the cerebellum, one of the most ancient regions of the brain.

Ivan obtained his PhD from the Wellcome programme in Mathematical Genomics and Medicine at University of Cambridge. His studies focused on the computational reconstruction of mouse developmental trajectories using single cell transcriptomics through a join effort put in motion in Berthold Gottgens and John Marioni's laboratories. His current interests involve the application, implementation and development of computational methods for reconstructing the molecular dynamics of brain development using organoid models. His research aims to explore evolutionary differences of developmental trajectories across species as well as between in vivo and in vitro models.

Dan received his bachelor's degree in Preclinical Medicine Studies from the University of Cambridge, specialising in Psychology, Neuroscience, and Behaviour in his third year and completing a research project under András Lakatos. He is an MB/PhD student within the Cambridge School of Clinical Medicine where, after completing PhD research at the LMB, he will return to finish his medical studies. His current research interests include comparative regulation of gene expression between species in early brain development, and analysis of electrical activity in brain organoids.

Feline obtained her PhD from the Utrecht University in the group of Casper Hoogenraad where she investigated axon development and mature axon functioning. Feline is interested in exploring evolutionary aspects of axon development, with a focus on transport dynamics, in health and disease.

Steven was awarded his DPhil from the Plant Sciences Department at the University of Oxford for researching angiosperm reproductive biology.  He subsequently worked in the bioinformatics group at the Babraham Institute (Cambridge, UK), primarily analysing NGS data and developing software.

Laura completed her international PhD program shared between the NIH (Bethesda, USA) and UCL (London, UK) in the laboratories of Kirsten Harvey and Mark Cookson. During her PhD she studied genetics of Parkinson’s disease using both cellular and animal models. She is now working on cerebral organoids and recently developed a model to study the choroid plexus and the cerebrospinal fluid secretion in vitro. She is using this model to study different functional aspects of the choroid plexus during development.

Madeline is a Group Leader in the Cell Biology Division of the Medical Research Council (MRC) Laboratory of Molecular Biology, part of the Cambridge Biomedical Campus in Cambridge, UK. Madeline studied biochemistry at Occidental College, Los Angeles, USA, before completing a PhD in 2010 in biomedical sciences at the University of California, San Diego, USA. She then joined the Institute of Molecular Biotechnology of the Austrian Academy of Sciences (IMBA) in Vienna, Austria as a postdoctoral researcher, before joining the LMB in 2015.