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.

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

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.

Martin Saurer

EMBO/SNF Fellow

Martin obtained his undergraduate from the University of Zürich, Switzerland. He then completed his Masters and PhD degress under the supervision of Prof. Nenad Ban at ETH Zürich. During his PhD, he used biochemistry and cryo-EM to study the structures and assembly of organellar ribosomes from various species. He joined in March 2025 first as an MRC Career Development Fellow and has since obtained EMBO and SNF fellowships to support his postdoctoral work.