Paula Garcia Galindo
Postdoc, Department of Physics
Paula is Spanish, trained as a physicist from EPFL (Switzerland) and Imperial College London. She is interested in theoretical evolution and ecology. During her PhD in Dr. Sebastian Ahnert’s group she focused on genotype-phenotype (GP) maps to study the impact of variation on molecular evolution, working in particular with non-deterministic GP maps of RNA. Now in the Fusco Lab she is working on models of bacteria and phage coevolution.
Sung Soo Moon
Postdoc, Department of Zoology
After completing my MSci in physics at Imperial College London, I worked on developing methods for biological networks during my PhD with Dr. Sebastian Ahnert at the Department of Chemical Engineering and Biotechnology. I’m currently interested in the organisational principles of nervous systems as a member of the Drosophila Connectomics group led by Dr. Greg Jefferis.
Lakshmi Balasubramaniam
Postdoctoral Fellow, Gurdon Institute
Lakshmi trained as an engineer and has a PhD in cellular biophysics from Institut Jacques Monod, Paris. As a postdoctoral fellow in the group of Dr. Fengzhu Xiong she is interested in understanding how tissue mechanics affect cell migration and morphogenesis using an interdisciplinary approach.
Former Members
Adrien Hallou
Wolfram Pönisch
Ruby Peters
Alexander Nestor-Bergmann
Zoe Nahas
Nuno Miguel Oliveira
Daniel Kunz
Enrico Sandro Colizzi
Tasmin Sarkany
Dillan Saunders
Alexandre Porcher Fernandes
Joel Hochstetter
Apolline Delahaye
Pinak Samal
Augusto Borges
Jose Ignacio Perez Lopez
PhD Student, Department of Chemistry
Jose Ignacio is a PhD student in the Yusuf Hamied Department of Chemistry. He completed his Biochemistry degree at the University of Seville, Spain, and specialised in Molecular Genetics and Computational Biophysics during his MPhil. Currently, as a member of Professor Collepardo’s lab, he is investigating chromatin phase transitions using multiscale computational models.
James Hammond
Postdoc, Department of Genetics
James studied Biology and Mathematics at the University of St Andrews, followed by a DPhil at the University of Oxford, where he studied the evolution of somitogenesis. As a postdoc in Erik Clark’s group, James uses microscopy and reaction-diffusion models to understand the mechanisms and evolution of scale-invariant patterning in fly embryos.
Fengtong Ji
Postdoctoral Fellow, Gurdon Institute
Fengtong studied nanorobotic engineering and active matter in his PhD at The Chinese University of Hong Kong. Currently, as a Wellcome Trust Early Career Fellow at the Gurdon Institute, he integrates nanorobotics and biotechnology to investigate the physical and molecular mechanisms underlying cell dynamics and tissue formation during development.
Luca Cocconi
Postdoctoral Fellow, Department of Physics
I am an Oppenheimer Fellow based in the Souslov Lab at the Cavendish Laboratory. I am particularly interested in fundamental physical constraints underlying the functioning of micro-machines operating far from thermodynamic equilibrium. My current research focuses on developing minimal analytically tractable models of “smart” active agents and materials. I hold a Theoretical Physics Msci from Imperial College and a PhD in Applied Maths from the Francis Crick Institute and Imperial College.
Theory of Living Matter Seminar Series 