Alumni

Prasanna Channathodiyil
Prasanna worked as a PDRA in the lab for four and a half years, spearheading our move into human cell and cancer systems. She left in 2021 to join AstraZeneca as a PDRA.

Andre Zylstra
Andre was our fourth PhD student and gained his doctorate in 2019, working in collaboration with Olivia Casanueva's lab on mechanisms of ageing in yeast and worms. After a short post doc in the lab he moved to a post doc postion in the Heinemann lab in Groningen.

Cristina Cruz
Cris was the first arrival in the lab when we started in 2009, and worked as a research assistant before being promoted first to a post doctoral research associate then a senior post doc. After 10 years in the lab she decided to look for new challenges in the flourishing Cambridge Biotech sector and has just started a new role at Cambridge Epigenetix.

Michelle King
Michelle worked in the lab for 3 years as an research assistant before moving on to start a PhD at the University of Sheffield.

Luca Love
Luca spent almost a year in the lab as a sandwich year during his honours course at University of Birmingham. He is currently doing a PhD at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm.

Ryan Hull
Ryan was the third PhD student in the group and gained his doctorate in 2018. Ryan did some really pioneering work understanding the relationship between gene expression and de novo adaptive mutations. After a short post-doc in the lab he moved to a postdoc position with the Pelechano lab in Stockholm.

Monica Della Rosa
Monica arrived in the lab as a 6 month Erasmus placement student in 2016, and stayed for an additional year as a research assistant working on ageing gene expression analysis. She left to take on a PhD position and is now doing a PhD in the Spivakov group at the LMS.

Grazia Pizza
Grazia worked as a research assistant performing ageing research in the group for a year before taking up a PhD position at Imperial College.

Lucy Field
Lucy worked for a year in the Epigenetics program as a research assistant, developing low cell number ChIP approaches for various labs. She left to start a PhD at the Weatherall Institute of Molecular Medicine in Oxford in 2016.

Stephen Frenk
Steve was the second PhD student in the lab, he joined in 2011 and defended his thesis in 2015. Steve worked initially on meiosis and later on ageing, and took his interest in ageing research forward to a postdoctoral research associate position at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. He returned to the UK in 2018 to take up a bioinformatics position with Achilles Therapeutics.

Qian Gao
Qian was a postdoctoral research associate in the lab from 2013 to 2015, working on the effects of chromatin on gene expression in ageing cells. She moved on to position as a computational biologist for Adaptimmune.

Carmen Jack
Carmen was the first PhD student in the lab, she joined in 2010 and defended her thesis in 2014. Carmen worked on ribosomal DNA recombination mechanisms in yeast. After her PhD, she took a job as an analyst for the Management Consultancy Elix-IRR.

Xabier Vergara
Xabi came to the lab for a two month placement in 2015 through the Erasmus program during his Biochemistry degree at Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona in Spain. He worked on extrachromosomal circle formation during ageing in yeast.

Leila Alieh
Leila joined the lab for a 4 month Da Vinci project in 2015 working on major satellite sequences in ES cells. She moved on to a PhD position in Dresden.

Tasmia Mirza
Tasmia came to the lab for a 9-month undergraduate placement in 2015, studying relocalisation of AID in mammalian cells. She is about to start a masters course in Oncology.

Federico Donà
Federico joined the lab for a 6 month Da Vinci placement in 2014 working on major satellite sequences in ES cells, and liked it so much that he stayed for a year. He left to start a PhD at Kings College London, and now has a postdoc position back home in Italy.

Yu Lee Paul
Yu Lee worked in the lab for a year in 2014, developing methods for analysing gene expression and chromatin structure in small populations of aged cells. She left to start up a web design company.

Amelia Brasnett
​Amelia joined the lab for a 4 week summer placement sponsored by the Nuffield program in 2014, studying the effects of anti-ageing drugs on yeast under stress.

Simona Palusci
Simona worked in the lab for 12 weeks on a Da Vinci placement in 2013, studying the roles on non-coding DNA in heterochromatin formation. She left to look for a PhD position.

Antoni Beltran
In 2013, Toni did an 8 week placement in the Houseley lab studying the role of RNAi in heterochromatin formation. He was sponsored by the Amgen programme to do this placement during his degree at the University of Valencia, and later took on a PhD position with Peter Sarkies at Imperial College.

Jack Feltham
In 2012, Jack did an 8 week placement in the Houseley lab studying AID re-localization during his degree at the University of Cambridge. He was sponsored by the Wellcome Trust.

Laurens Lambert
Laurens did a six-month research project in the lab studying the regulation of Activation Induced Deaminase, a protein involved in mutation and recombination during B cell activation and in DNA demethylation during germ cell formation. He moved on to do further placements in the Bird lab (Edinburgh), and the Amon lab (MIT), and then embarked on a PhD at MIT.

Ada Piechula
In 2012, Ada did a 4 week placement in the Houseley lab studying AID re-localization in yeast. She was sponsored by the Nuffield Foundation

Javier Ash
In 2011, Javier did a 4 week placement in the Houseley lab working on methods for targeting RNA interference. He was sponsored by the Nuffield Foundation. Javier came back to the lab for a four week summer placement in 2015 to work on extrachromosomal circle formation, sponsored by the Wellcome Trust, during his medicine degree at Imperial College London.

Priya Sharma
​In 2010, Priya did an 8 week placement in the Houseley lab studying pulsed field methods for RNA analysis. She was sponsored by the Nuffield Foundation.

You can see where other Babraham Institute alumni are now on the People/Alumni pages