Snezhana (Snezhka) Oliferenko studied biochemistry and virology at Lomonosov Moscow State University before joining Lukas Huber’s lab at the Research Institute of Molecular Pathology (IMP) in Vienna, Austria, for her PhD studies. Snezhka then moved to Singapore to work as a postdoc with Mohan Balasubramanian. In 2002, she established her research laboratory at the Temasek Life Sciences Laboratory (TLL) in Singapore. At the end of 2013, she moved her lab to the Randall Division of Cell and Molecular Biophysics at King’s College London, UK. Since August 2016, her lab is located in the new Francis Crick Institute in London. Her research is funded by the Wellcome Trust Senior Investigator Scheme and BBSRC.

email to: snezhana.oliferenko(at)kcl.ac.uk or snezhka.oliferenko(at)crick.ac.uk

Ying Gu did her PhD on nervous system development in fruit fly with Fengwei Yu at the Temasek Life Sciences Laboratory (TLL) in Singapore. She has been a postdoc in Oliferenko lab since the summer of 2012, working on evolution of cellular division site positioning. Ying wants to understand how the cell cycle and cell polarity machineries can be put together to produce different behaviors.

email to: ying.1.gu(at)kcl.ac.uk or ying.gu(at)crick.ac.uk

 

Risa Mori studied at University College London before working with Takashi Toda at the London Research Institute (Cancer Research UK) - now the Francis Crick Institute. She did her PhD on the mechanisms underlying microtubule nucleation in the fission yeast Schizosaccharomyces pombe. Risa joined the lab in the beginning of 2015. She is interested in understanding how the nuclear envelope breaks and reforms in S. japonicus.

email to: risa.mori(at)kcl.ac.uk or risa.mori(at)crick.ac.uk

Sherman Foo has started his PhD with us in 2016. Sherman did his undergraduate degree at the National University of Singapore with the final year spent in Randall Division in the lab of Andrew Beavil. Sherman is interested in discovering the roles of lipid metabolism in emergence of different strategies of mitotic nuclear envelope remodeling.  

email to: sherman.foo(at)kcl.ac.uk or sherman.foo(at)crick.ac.uk

Sara Alam joined the lab in September 2017, as a PhD student. Sara studied at University College London, working towards her MSci degree in the lab of Sara Mole at LMCB. Together with the lab of Jürg Bähler at UCL, Sara probes the central carbon metabolism in S. pombe and S. japonicus with a view of understanding how they may have influenced the divergent cell biology of these related organisms.

email to: sara.alam(at)crick.ac.uk

Polina Reichert is a joint PhD student between the Caudron lab at Queen Mary University and us, funded by the LIDo program (the dual nature of her presence in the lab is exemplified above). She started her project on metabolic compartmentalization in fission and  budding (!) yeast in September 2018, after finishing her LIDo rotations. Polina graduated from Jacobs University in Bremen, Germany.

email to: polina.reichert(at)crick.ac.uk

Lydia Thompson has joined us as a research assistant after doing her King's final year project in the lab. Lydia is developing new genetics tools for S. japonicus.

email to: lydia.thompson(at)crick.ac.uk

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PAST LAB MEMBERS

Gerard Pieper (PhD student, now a postdoc in Adele Marston's lab, University of Edinburgh)

Maria (Masha) Makarova (postdoc, now a Research Fellow at the University of Birmingham)

Aleksandar Vjestica (PhD student, now a Group Leader at the University of Lausanne, Switzerland, via a postdoc with Sophie Martin)

Dan Zhang (PhD student, now a Principal Investigator at Temasek Life Sciences Laboratory in Singapore)

Candice Yam (PhD student, now a postdoc in Uttam Surana’s lab, Institute of Molecular and Cellular Biology, A*STAR, Singapore)

Liling Zheng (PhD student, now an associate professor at Zhejiang University, China)

Yu He (PhD student, now lives in Tokyo, Japan)

Rahul Thadani (research assistant, now a postdoc in Julia Cooper's lab at NIH, via PhD with Frank Uhlmann at the Francis Crick Institute)

Liang Meng Wee (research assistant, now a postdoc in Carlos Bustamante’s lab, University of California, Berkeley, via PhD with Phil Zamore at UMass Medical School)

Yuen Chyao Ling (research assistant, now works at Changi General Hospital, Singapore)

Chai Sook Keat (research assistant, then did her PhD in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia)

LONG-TERM VISITORS

Elisa Gomez-Gil, a PhD student in Jose Cansado's lab in Murcia

Simon Sprenger, a PhD student in  David Teis's lab in Innsbruck. Simon has been collaborating with Gerard on understanding mitotic NE dynamics in S. japonicus

UNDERGRADUATES

We had many wonderful undergraduates working with us in Singapore. Some still stay in touch: Ranjay Jayadev (went on to do his PhD at Duke University), Haochen (Jerry) Yu (now a postdoc at ETH, Zurich) and Pooja Padmini from Bharathiar University in India.

After our move to London, we've been having fun hosting the following students:

Behzad Karkaria, King's, final year project 2015, then went on to do his PhD in the LIDo program

Ana Rodriguez, University of Seville, an Erasmus-funded summer student 2015, now working on her PhD at University of Edinburgh

Preveina Mahadevan, King's, summer student 2015, funded by King's Undergraduate Research Fellowships

Karishma Valand, King's, who was a summer student in 2015 and came back for her final year project 2016, now a laboratory research scientist in the Downward lab at the Crick

Constantinos Poyiatzis, King's, a Wellcome Trust-funded summer student 2016

Laura Palmer, King's, summer student 2016, supported by King's Undergraduate Research Fellowships scheme - who also came back for her final year project 2017. Laura went on to obtain her MSc at UCL in 2017-2018

Derron Abdulla, King's, final year project 2017. He did his MSc degree at UCL in 2018-2019

Nikita Komarov, King's, 2016-2018, including a stint as a summer student supported by King's Undergraduate Research Fellowships scheme,  now is working on his PhD at the University of Fribourg, Switzerland, via the MRes at UCL

Chalita Chomkatekaew, King's, final year project 2018, now a PhD student / research assistant at Mahidol Oxford Tropical Medicine Research Unit, Bangkok, Thailand

Fabiha Alam, King's, final year project 2018

Edward Leggett, King's Physics, summer student 2018, supported by King's Undergraduate Research Fellowship, now working on his PhD at Oxford

Robert Taylor, King's, summer student 2019

Piotr Kwiatkowski, King's, final year project 2020, now a PhD student at King's

Lydia Thompson, King's, final year project 2020 (came back to the lab as a research assistant!)

Marta Lozano, King's, final year project 2021

Loius Massey, King's, MSci Molecular Genetics 2021