Members

Kelly Nguyen

Principal Investigator

Kelly obtained her Ph.B (Honours) degree in Chemistry from the Australian National University (Australia). She completed her PhD under the supervision of Dr Kiyoshi Nagai at the MRC-LMB where she focused on structural studies of large spliceosomal complexes. She was a Miller Research Fellow at UC Berkeley hosted by Professors Kathleen Collins and Eva Nogales. She returned to the MRC-LMB to establish her own lab in 2019.

She was awarded University Medal from ANU, RNA Society Scaringe Award, Biochemical Society Early Career Award, Suffrage Award, Eppendorf Young European Investigator Award, EMBO Young Investigator Award and the Colworth Medal.

Elsa Eschevarria

Investigator Scientist/Lab Manager

Elsa completed her Bachelor and Master’s degrees in Cellular and Molecular Biology at the University of Salamanca, Spain. She obtained her PhD in Biochemistry, Molecular Biology and Biomedicine from the Complutense University of Madrid, Spain. During her PhD she used X-ray crystallography to study proteins involved in the inositol phosphate pathway and its relationship with RNA. She then became a joint Postdoctoral Fellow with Dr Mariann Bienz and Caroline Dean at the MRC LMB where she studied protein complexes involved in epigenetic switching mechanism in Arabidopsis. Elsa joined our lab as an Investigator Scientist and lab manager in June 2023.

George Ghanim

Jane Coffin Childs Fellow

George obtained his B.S. in Molecular Biology and Biochemistry from Rutgers University (New Jersey, US). He worked in the lab of Isaac Edery during his undergraduate. He obtained his PhD from the University of California, Berkeley in the lab of Donald Rio. During this time he worked on P element transposases in Drosophila and other eukaryotes using biochemistry, cryo-EM and cell biology. He joined our lab as an MRC Career Development Fellow in February 2020 and became a Jane Coffin Childs Fellow in July 2021.

Hongmiao Hu

EMBO Fellow

Hongmiao obtained his B.A. in Biological Sciences from Shandong Agricultural University in China. He obtained his PhD from the Chinese Academy of Sciences under the supervision of Jiamu Du during which he focused on structural studies of chromatin regulators in plants using X-ray crystallography and cryo-EM . He joined our lab as an MRC Career Development Fellow in April 2022 and will become an EMBO fellow in April 2023

Siggi Thorkelsson

MRC Career Development Fellow

Siggi obtained his B.Sc from the University of Iceland, followed by an M.Sc at the University of Copenhagen. He did his PhD at the Center of Structural Systems Biology in Hamburg under the supervision of Kay Grunewald. His PhD focused on structural studies of viral proteins essential for transcription and replication. He joined the LMB as as an MRC Career Development Fellow with Anne Bertolotti and us in September 2022.

Patryk Ludzia

MRC Career Development Fellow

Patryk obtained his B.Sc from the University of Wroclaw, Poland. He completed his PhD at the University of Oxford under the co-supervision of Bungo Akiyoshi and Christina Redfield. His PhD focused on structural studies of unconventional kinetochores in kinetoplastics using both X-ray crystallography and NMR. He joined the LMB as an MRC Career Development Fellow in April 2023.

Nirupa Desai

Wellcome Trust Clinical Fellow

Nirupa obtained her medical degree from the University College of London and is currently a Haematology Consultant at Addenbrookes’ Hospital in Cambridge. She also completed a PhD at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology under the supervision of Sir Venki Ramakrishnan. During her PhD, she used cryo-EM to study translation in mitochrondria. She joined us on a Wellcome Trust Clininal Fellowship in May 2023.

Inga Hochheiser

EMBO Fellow

Inga obtained undergraduate from Bonn-Rhein-Sieg University, Germany, followed by a Bachelor of Honors in Molecular Biology from the University of Aberdeen, Scotland. She also completed her Masters and PhD under the supervision of Prof. Matthias Geyer at the University of Bonn, Germany. During her PhD, she used biochemistry and cryo-EM to study the structures and assembly of the NLRP3 inflammasome. She joined us as an MRC Career Development Fellow in May 2023.