Members' Directory

Biography: I completed a degree in Natural Sciences at Cambridge University, UK before coming to Heidelberg as an exchange student with the Studienstiftung des Deutschen Volkes. While in Heidelberg, I undertook student research projects at the German Cancer Research Centre and EMBL.
On returning to the UK, I completed a doctorate in Drosophila development at Oxford University. I then decided to broaden my science communications skills, and currently write and edit articles for New Scientist magazine.

Biography: I have done my undergraduate studies in Biotechnology from India and came to University of Nottingham to do masters in Integrative Systems Biology. The transition in the area of studies, from biotechnology to systems biology, has put forth a challenge in front of me in order have a successful research career. I think that my experience as a masters student was the ideal situation envisaged by most students. Apart from receiving scholarship for my MSc from university and gaining proper academic training from the professors at UoN, I got paid internship at one of the most prestigious biological research institute of Europe - EMBL-EBI, Cambridge (UK). I was an intern curator for 7 months in Computational Neurobiology group under Dr. Nicolas LeNovere. My project involved encoding, curating, annotating and submitting models to BioModels Database in order to enhance sharing and reusability of the models. EBI came out to be the best for me to gain knowledge and learn skills required for developing and simulating diverse complex mathematical models using different simulation tools and model sharing format like SBML. During my internship, I submitted my MSc thesis and successful completed my MSc with distinction. By the end of masters, I was very much satisfied and confident about my future career. I received PhD position in my department and was successful in getting Research Excellence Scholarship from University of Nottingham. As result, currently, I am in my 1st year of PhD at School of Biosciences, Sutton Bonington campus. My multidisciplinary PhD project aims to develop mathematical models of nutrient uptake in plants, particularly rice which both forms the diet of more than half of the world population and provides insights for other crop species (e.g. wheat and barley).

Biography: Geoff Barton did his first degree in Biochemistry at the University of Manchester. He then did a Ph.D. supervised by Mike Sternberg in the Department of Crystallography, Birkbeck College, University of London before spending two years as an ICRF Fellow working with Chris Rawlings at the Imperial Cancer Research Fund Labs. in London. In 1989 he was awarded a Royal Society University Research Fellowship to work in the Lab of Molecular Biophysics, University of Oxford. From April 1995 until October 1997, Geoff was also Head of Genome Informatics at the Wellcome Trust Centre for Human Genetics.

From 1st October 1997-July 2001 Geoff was a Research and Development Team Leader at the EMBL European Bioinformatics Institute.

From 1st January 1998-July 2001 Geoff was also head of the European Macromolecular Structure Database at EBI.

From 30th March 2001 Geoff has been Professor of Bioinformatics at the School of Life Sciences, University of Dundee. Geoff moved to Dundee full-time in July 2001 and is now co-director (with Mike Ferguson) of the Post Genomics and Molecular Interactions Centre.

Biography: 2012-2013 Postdoctoral Fellow, EMBL - European Bioinformatics Institute, United Kingdom
2008-2012 Ph.D. student, University of Cambridge, EMBL - European Bioinformatics Institute, United Kingdom (Thesis defended 31st November 2012)
THESIS Computational Studies on the Biogenesis and Function of Small Non-coding RNAs.
2006-2008 Researcher at GlaxoSmithKline Research Centre Zagreb, Croatia
RESEARCH Analyzed the effects of multiple immunosuppressive drugs on gene expression based on high-throughput data. Performed experimental work, including the construction of recombinant kinase proteins and the inhibition of inflammatory responses in T-cells.
2001-2006 Bs.C. and M.Sc. Pharmacy, Faculty of Pharmacy, University of Zagreb, Croatia

THESIS Construction, expression and characterization of chimere proteins LCK and ZAP-70 through confocal microscopy and hybridization of specific antibodies.
GRADE 4.55 out of 5
1999-2004 Bs.C. and M.Sc. Molecular Biology, Faculty of Science, University of Zagreb, Croatia
THESIS MADNet: Microarray Database Network web server for analysis and interactive visualization of microarray data.
RESEARCH Built a tool for the visualization of microarray data on pathway maps, allowing for the prediction of transcription factor binding sites in co-regulated genes; second author in Nucleic Acid Research.
Analyzed the codon usage of available metagenomic datasets.
GRADE 4.96 out of 5
1997-1999 United World College - USA, International Baccalaureate (IB). Montezuma, NM, USA
GRADE 42 out of 45.