Our people
Jenny Shi
Jenny studied Chemistry and Computer Science at Stanford. She joined our group as an MPhil student in October 2024 to work on the in vitro assembly of recombinant tau into filaments with the same structures as those observed in human disease.
Kai Yi
Kai studied Applied Mathematics at the University of Shanghai for Science and Technology in China. He then went to the University of New South Wales in Australia for his PhD in Statistics. Kai joined our group as a postdoc in May 2024 to work on machine-learning methods for protein design.
Dongqi Zhang
Dongqi studied Pharmaceutical Sciences at Shandong University, and she did a PhD in Structural Pharmacology at Zhejiang University. Dongqi joined our group as a postdoc in November 2023 to work on laboratory-based assembly methods for amyloids that replicate the same structures as those observed in human brains.
Chao Qi
Chao studied Biology at Jilin University and the CAS Institute of Biophysics in China. He did a PhD at the ETH in Zurich. Chao joined our group as a postdoc in January 2022 to work on the development of improved model systems for tau assembly.
Kiarash Jamali
Kiarash studied Mathematics and Statistics at the University of Toronto, St George. He joined our group as a PhD student in October 2021, but had been working with us a volunteering undergrad student since the COVID19 lockdown in April 2020. Kiarash works on machine-learning methods for solving cryo-EM structures and the engineering of new protein functionality. He won the LMB's Max Perutz Prize for best PhD thesis for his work on automated atomic modelling and protein identification in cryo-EM maps with ModelAngelo.
Sofia Lovestam
Sofia studied at Imperial College of London where she did a BSc in Biochemistry and an MRes in Structural Molecular Biology. She joined in October 2019 as a PhD student to work on the in vitro aggregation of tau and alpha-synuclein. In 2022, her paper on seeded aggregation of alpha-synuclein won the FEBS Open Bio Article Prize and Sofia won the LMB's Max Perutz Prize for best PhD thesis for her work on in vitro assembly of tau. After her PhD, Sofia decided to stay as a post-doc in the lab.
Sjors Scheres
Sjors studied Chemistry at Utrecht University, The Netherlands, where he also obtained his PhD in protein crystallography. He was a post-doc in the group of Jose-Maria Carazo in Madrid, before he started his group at the LMB in 2010. Since 2018, Sjors is also joint Head of the Structural Studies division. His main interests lie in the development of new methods for high-resolution cryo-EM structure determination and their application to amyloid filaments.
Previous members
Gabriel Stephenson
Gabriel studied Biochemistry at the University of Oxford, after which he worked for two years at Wren Therapeutics in Cambridge on developing kinetic assays of amyloid aggregation. He joined our group in October 2023 to work on laboratory-based assembly methods for amyloids that replicate the same structures as those observed in human brains. Gabriel went on to explore his interest in computer programming in a commercial environment.
Johannes Schwab
Johannes studied Mathematics at the Leopold Franzens University of Innsbrueck, Austria, where he did his PhD on deep-learning for inverse problems. He joined our group as a postdoc in April 2021 to work on machine-learning methods for modeling continuous structural heterogeneity in cryo-EM reconstruction. Johannes is the main developer of DynaMight for the modelling of structural Dynamics that Might improve your map. In August 2024, he returned to Innsbruck in Austria.
Yang Yang
Yang studied Biology at Beijing Forestry University, and completed her PhD in Biophysics at the Institute of Biophysics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, where she also worked as an assistant investigator in the group of Prof. Zihe Rao. She joined our group as a postdoc in May 2020 to work on structural studies of amyloids from human brain. In 2022, Yang won the LMB's Joan A. Steitz postdoc prize for her work on cryo-EM structures of amyloid-beta from Alzheimer's brain and alpha-synuclein from brains with Lewy pathology. In 2024, Yang became an Assistant Professor at the Van Andel Institute.
David Li
David studied Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at MIT. He worked in the lab of Prof Feng Zhang on CRISPR systems. David joined our group as an MPhil student in October 2022 to work on in vitro assembly of tau filaments. During his stay with us David also developed new classification software for filaments. David went on to do a PhD at Stanford.
Dari Kimanius
Dari studied Theoretical Physics at the Royal Institute of Technology (KTH, Stockholm), and did a PhD in Biophysics and Bioinformatics at Stockholm University. Dari joined our group as a post-doc in May 2019. He worked on the application of machine-learning methods to cryo-EM structure determination. He developed Blush regularisation, which improves many cryo-EM structure refinements. Dari went on to become an independent group leader at the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative Institute for Advanced Biological Imaging.
Liyi Dong
Liyi studied Biology at China Agricultural University and did a BSc at Purdue University, where she worked with Michael Rossmann. Liyi joined our group as a PhD student in November 2017. She worked on automated 2D class selection. Liyi became a consultant after she left the lab.
Takanori Nakane
Takanori studied as an M.D. at Kyoto University, where he also obtained his PhD in Medicine. In 2014 he also obtained an M.Phil in Computational Biology from the University of Cambridge. Takanori joined our group as a postdoc in October 2017. He worked on many facets of single-particle analysis and kindly dedicated a lot of his time to provide support to RELION users worldwide. In 2020, he won the LMB's Brenner postdoc prize for his work on cryo-EM reconstruction to atomic resolution. Takanori moved on as a research scientist at the University of Osaka to work on his old-time passion of (micro-electron) diffraction.
Wenjuan Zhang
Wenjuan studied Biological Sciences and Chemistry at Central China Normal University and did a PhD in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at University of Science and Technology of China. Before joining us in June 2017, Wenjuan did a postdoc in Cara Vaughan's group at Birkbeck College, London on centrosome binding proteins in yeast. Wenjuan worked on the structural characterisation of tau filaments. She went on to become a programme leader track at the MRC Prion unit in London.
Alex Epstein
Alex studied Molecular, Cell and Developmental Biology and Chemistry at Yale, where he also worked in the Pollard lab. Alex joined our group as an MPhil student in October 2018. He worked on in vitro aggregation of tau. Alex went on to do a PhD at the Rockefeller University in New York.
Jasenko Zivanov
Jasenko studied Computer Science at the University of Basel, where he also obtained his PhD (on the reconstruction of complex 3D shapes from scanning electron microscopy images). Jasenko joined our group as a postdoc in March 2017. He developed Bayesian polishing, as well as aberration corrections, for cryo-EM single-particle analysis. Jasenko went back to Basel to do another postdoctoral stay in the lab of Daniel Castano-Diez. He later joined our group again for an 11-month remote-working arrangement with our group, before taking up a senior position in the group of Henning Stahlberg in Lausanne.
Shaoda He
Shaoda studied Biology at Peking University, where he also participated in a programme organized by the Electronic Engineering and Computer Science Department. Shaoda joined our group in October 2014. He developed the helical reconstruction algorithms in RELION. His paper on helical reconstruction in RELION was awarded Paper of the Year in the J. Struct. Biol. and Shaoda won the LMB's Max Perutz Prize for best PhD thesis. After obtaining his PhD, Shaoda took up a job at Lloyds bank in the City of London.
Thomas Martin
Thomas studied Physics at the Technical University of Munich, where he also obtained his PhD. Thomas joined our group in March 2014. Thomas developed 3D DNA-origami objects as scaffolds for proteins on cryo-EM grids. He also investigated the use of graphene oxide as experimental support. Thomas went on to become the CEO of his own software company.
Anthony Fitzpatrick
Anthony studied Mathematics at Cambridge University, where he also obtained his PhD in Physics. He did a postdoc as a Marie Curie Outgoing Research Fellow in the Zewail group at CalTech. Anthony joined our group as a returning postdoc under the same Marie Curie fellowship in March 2015 with the aim to learn single-particle analysis. He solved the structures of a bacetrial efflux pump and of tau filaments from the brain of an individual with Alzheimer's disease. He went on to become an Assistant Professor at Columbia University.
Xiao-chen Bai
Xiao-chen was a postdoc with us from March 2012 until March 2017. He studied Mechanical engineering at Tsinghua University, Bejing, China, where he also obtained his PhD in Biophysics. In our group, Xiaochen was involved in many methods development that drove the early stages of the 'resolution revolution' in cryo-EM, and he solved multiple structures, including ribosomes, the ryanodine receptor, the apoptosome, the spliceosome, and gamma-secretase. Xiao-chen won a MRC CEO Award for his contributions to LMB science. He went on to become an Assistant Professor at the University of Texas, Southwestern in Dallas, US
Cornelius Gati
Cornelius was a postdoc with us from November 2015 until December 2016. Coming from a background in free-electron X-ray lasers, he was quickly scooped up as a staff scientist by SLAC when they heard he had mastered cryo-EM single-particle analysis. Cornelius did a structure of a bacterial ion transporter, and will also be remembered for his epic contribution as lead singer of the LMB's own "Yeastie Boys" at the 2016 Christmas Party. Cornelius went on to take up an independent PI position at SLAC National Lab at Stanford.
Julian Conrad
Julian Conrad was the first PhD in our group! He joined us in September 2012. He worked on the structures of bacterial replication complexes, which we did in collaboration with the Lamers group at LMB. In January 2016, Julian became a support staff scientist at the newly opened cryo-EM facility in Stockholm.