Lab Photos
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 a University Medal from ANU, the 2016 RNA Society Scaringe Award, the 2017 Biochemical Society Early Career Award, the 2020 Suffrage Award, the 2022 Eppendorf Young European Investigator Award, the 2023 EMBO Young Investigator Award, the 2024 Colworth Medal, the 2024 Nature Inspiring Women in Science shortlist, and the 2025 Lister Prize.
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/Investigator Scientist
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 became an EMBO fellow in April 2023. After his fellowship, he continues working as an Investigator Scientist in our lab.
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 her Bachelor and Masters degree from the University of Bonn, Germany. She completed her PhD under the supervision of Prof. Matthias Geyer at the Institute of Structural Biology at University Clinics Bonn. Her PhD research involved biochemical and structural characterisation of human innate immune receptors. She joined in May 2023 first as an MRC Career Development Fellow. She was awarded an EMBO long-term fellowship in August 2024.
Martin Saurer
EMBO/SNF Fellow
Martin obtained his undergraduate from the University of Zürich, Switzerland. He then completed his Masters and PhD degrees 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.
Sebastian Balch
MRC Postdoctoral Fellow
Sebastian obtained his Masters in Biochemistry from the University of St Andrews in 2021. He worked on GPCR during an industrial placement and spent his Masters year working in the lab of Dr Ulrich Schwarz-Linek. He joined our lab as a PhD student in October 2021 and defended his thesis in January 2026. He is continuing working with us as an MRC Postdoctoral Fellow.
Tae-kyeong Jeong
Wellcome-funded Postdoctoral Fellow
Tae-Kyeong completed his Bachelor and PhD degrees at KAIST in Daejeon, South Korea. During his PhD, he investigated the mechanism by which CODANIN1 regulates histone supply in cells under the supervision of Prof. Ji-Joon Song. He joined our lab as a postdoctoral fellow funded by the Wellcome Trust in January 2026.
Arjun Bhatta
Wellcome-funded Postdoctoral Fellow
Arjun completed his Bachelor of Technology from Sharda University, India. He then moved to Göttingen to do his Masters in the lab of Prof. Patrick Cramer at the MPI for Multidisciplinary Sciences and his PhD with Prof. Hauke Hillen at the University of Göttingen. His PhD work focused on the mechanisms of human mitochondrial RNA processing. He joined our lab as a postdoctoral fellow funded by the Wellcome Trust in February 2026.
Helen Yan
PhD student
Helen obtained her BA (Hons) in Natural Sciences from the University of Cambridge in 2022. Previously she worked in our lab during the summer of 2021 and in Prof. David Baker’s lab during summer 2022. She joined us as a PhD student in October 2022.
Simonas Melaika
PhD student
Simonas obtained his BA (Hons) in Natural Sciences from the University of Cambridge in 2022. Previously he worked in Ana Tufegdzic Vidakovic’s lab at the LMB during the summer of 2022 and in Wojtek Galej’s lab at EMBL (Grenoble) during summer 2023. He joined us as a PhD student in August 2024 and became a Boehringer Ingelheim PhD fellow in August 2025.
Karen Chau
Research Associate
Karen obtained her Integrated Masters in Biochemistry from the University of East Anglia 2022. She then completed her MPhil in Biochemistry under the supervision of Dr. Katrin Rittinger at the Francis Crick Institute, London. She joined our lab as a Research Associate funded by the Lister Research Prize.
Alumni
Adam Fountain (Graduate student, 2019-2021), current position: Postdoc with Lalita Ramakrishnan at the University of Cambridge
Paulina Engel (Summer student, 2022), current position: PhD student with Karl-Peter Hopfner at the Gene Center Munich
Marike van Roon (Investigator Scientist/Lab Manager, 2019-2023), current position: Senior Scientist at Artios Pharma
Tom Myles (Summer student, 2023), current position: PhD student with John Diffley at the Crick Institute
Zala Sekne (Graduate student, 2020-2024), current position: Illumina, California, USA
Molly Jefferis (Summer student, 2024), current position: PhD student at the University of Birmingham
Siggi Thorkelsson (Joint postdoc with Anne Bertolotti, 2022-2024), current position: Scientist at ThermoFisker
George Ghanim (Postdoc, 2020-2024), current position: Assistant Professor at Princeton University
Patryk Ludzia (Postdoc, 2023-2025), current position: Research Associate with Luca Pellegrini at the University of Cambridge
Elizabeth Wang (Summer student, 2025), current position: Master student at the University of Oxford