Ants, Bees, Genomes & Evolution @ Queen Mary University London
Team of social insect & genomics researchers
Courtney May
Technician researching gene expression in bees.
Federico López-Osorio
Research associate. Former Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions postdoctoral fellow, funded under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (MSCA grant agreement No. 840185). Evolutionary genomics of social hymenopterans.
Phoebe Cunningham
PhD student looking at bacterial symbioses in various ant species, and how they are genetically controlled.
Yannick Wurm
PI. Interested in evolutionary genomics, social evolution; strong bioinformatics track record. [2-page Curriculum Vitae PDF]. Some invited talks, teaching material and publications. [Twitter] [Mastodon]
Yeahji Jeong
Research lab technician. Working on how pesticides affect pollinator health via transcriptomes.
Alumni
Alicja Witwicka
London NERC DTP PhD student investigating effects of pesticides on gene expression in solitary bees. [Twitter]
Gabriel Hernandez-Gomez
PhD student co-funded by Colfuturo. I am interested in answering evolutionary questions through the understanding of genomes. I studied chordates immune system in the past and now I am happy to explore the fire ants and their supergene.
Marian Karl Priebe
LIDO BBSRC funded PhD student. I am studying how to infer gene function for emerging model organisms. MSc Bioinformatics, QMUL; BA Natural Science, University of Cambridge. [Twitter]
Benjamin Tapon
I’m Ben, a first year student at the LIDo DTP, currently doing my first 4-month rotation in the Wurm lab and working on the genetics behind fire ant sociality.
Carlo Kroll
MSc Bioinformatics student at QMUL. Currently working on implementation of new features to the SequenceServer. [LinkedIn]. Now Software Developer in Computational Bioinformatics at the William Harvey Research Institute.
Diego Pava-Mejia
MSc Bioinformatics student working on the implementation of new features to the SequenceServer (BLAST server). [LinkedIn]
Kenneth Chow
MSc Bioinformatics student working on unsupervised classification of bee behaviour [LinkedIn]
Hannah Chaudhry-Phipps
London NERC DTP Undergraduate Researcher. Helping with laboratory work on pollinator health.
Joe Colgan
Postdoctoral researcher interested in examining how organisms respond to environmental stressors through the use of genomic, molecular and computational techniques. [Google Scholar] [Researchgate]. Now - Junior Group leader/Assistant professor in Mainz, Germany.
Fabio Manfredini
Occasional visitor to the lab. Now group leader in Aberdeen.
Rodrigo Pracana
Postdoctoral researcher studying evolutionary genomics of ants, bees and more. [Scholar] [LinkedIn] [ORCID] [Twitter].
Raphaella Jackson
QMUL funded PhD student. Investigating the genomic basis of host-symbiont dependency in ants in collaboration with Dr. Lee Henry. BSc in Genetics (University of Georgia), BA in French (University of Georgia), MSc in Bioinformatics (Queen Mary University of London).
Raphael Leon
BBSRC Lido project student.
Anindita Brahma
Marie Sklodowska-Curie postdoctoral fellow. Interested in the evolution of social behaviour in ants and social wasps. [Twitter] [Google scholar]
Anurag Priyam
PhD student. Interested in genome evolution, gene expression, and user-centric research software development. Lead developer of SequenceServer (BLAST server), oswitch (virtual environments for reproducible analyses), Afra (crowd-sourced curation of gene models). [Twitter] [Personal page]
Magdalena Ines Schacht
QMUL funded PhD student. I am studying the evolution and development of sensory organs in arthropods in collaboration with Dr. Angelika Stollewerk. MSc Developmental, Neural and Behavioural Biology Georg-August-University of Göttingen; BSc Biology Georg-August-University of Göttingen.
Siv Lund Leknes
MSc Bioinformatics student at QMUL. Currently investigating the transcriptomics of ant queen spermatheca. BSc in Molecular Medicine from Aarhus University, Denmark. Now Development Scientist at Novo Nordisk.
Iwo Pieniak
MSc Bioinformatics student. Working on implementation of new features to the SequenceServer. MSc Genomic Medicine, University of Southampton. Now Bioinformatics Software QA Engineer at Achilles Therapeutics.
Kishor Dhaygude
Helsinki team ANTZZ-based occasional visitor to the lab. Now Bioinformatician (Clinical Research Data Analyst) - University of Helsinki.
Gino Brignoli
Postgraduate research assistant studying the evolution of social structures in the Yellow Meadow Ant. Interests include eco-evolutionary dynamics, conservation science and taxonomy. MSc Ecology & Evolutionary Biology, QMUL; BSc Biodiversity & Conservation, Birkbeck. [Twitter] [LinkedIn]. Now PhD student on NERC DTP.
Abdoulie Kanteh
QMUL Masters Project 2017. Now Higher Scientific Officer at MRC Unit The Gambia at LSHTM.
Bruno Vieira
Queen Mary University of London funded doctoral student. Interested in Bioinformatics, Genomics and Web Development. Founder of bionode.io. [Website] [GitHub] [Twitter] [Blog] [Personal Page]. Now data scientist at Resurgo genetics.
Leandro Rodrigues Santiago
MSc Genetics, Universidade de São Paulo (2013), Brazil. PhD student at QMUL, funded by Science Without Borders, CNPq, Brazil. Research interests: population genetics, molecular biology, epigenetics and bioinformatics. Now Bioinformatician Postdoc at William Harvey Research Institute.
Ismail Moghul
Bioinformatics Masters Student. Now Lido BBSRC DTP PhD student. Interested in Bioinformatics, Genetics underlying Biomedical Diseases and Neurobiology. [GitHub]
Isabel Fletcher
LIDO BBSRC-funded rotation PhD student (placement). Now PhD student at London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medecine.
Esteban Alberto Gomez Cifuentes
MSc Bioinformatics student from QMUL. I am studying the balancing selection in insects and the use of different methodologies to identify it. Now Bioinformatician at the Lipid Mediator Unit of the William Harvey Research Institute
Emeline Favreau
NERC-funded doctoral student from London DTP. Insect evolution, social adaptation, bioinformatics. [Twitter] [Website]
Carlos Martinez Ruiz
BSc University of Valencia, Spain; MSc Ecology and Evolutionary Biology QMUL. Current PhD student funded by the London NERC DTP. Using the genetic structure underlying social polymorphism in ants as an independent test of our understanding on sexual chromosome evolution. [DTP profile] [Twitter]
Eckart Stolle
Postdoc (Marie Curie IEF) interested in the mechanisms underlying evolution of genomes, chromosomes and genes in relation to behavior, castes and sociality. [Google Scholar] [ORCID] [Personal page]. Now - head of Comparative Insect Genomics at Museum König Bonn.
Natalia Araujo
PhD student visitor from Cristina Arias' lab at University of Sao Paolo. Now staff scientist at Evolutionary Biology and Ecology Unit, Universit&eactue; Libre de Bruxelles.
Catherine Okuboyejo
MSc Bioinformatics student. Investigating unique features of newly sequenced genomes. BSc Biochemistry, University of Surrey. Now Senior Consultant Data Engineer at NextWave Consulting.
Valentine Patterson
Msc Ecology and Evolutionary Genomics student at QMUL, studying the molecular diagnostics of pollinator health. Now PhD student in Mainz.
Richard Burns
MSc Bioinformatics student. BSc Biology graduate from University of Northampton. Working on individual-based forward genetic evolutionary simulations in haplodiploids. Now PhD student at Kings College.
Margot Hamelin
Engineering student in Biosciences and Biotechnologies at INSA de Lyon, France. Studying genotyping methods.
Former project students
- Hiten Chowdhary (Google Summer of Code 2016, 2017).
- Julian Mazzitelli (Google Summer of Code 2016).
- Ilya Levantis (QMUL Intern 2015-16). Now Lido BBSRC DTP PhD student.
- Diego Pereira (Universidade de São Paulo visiting undergraduate 2016).
- Elie Gordon (QMUL Masters Project 2015).
- Nazrath Nawaz (QMUL Undergraduate Project 2015). Now PhD student at QMUL (Bessant Lab)
- Elena Shanti Franchina (QMUL Undergraduate Project 2015).
- Filip Ter (Summer Intern 2015). EECS undergraduate intern. Now Data Scientist.
- Gideon Pomeranz (QMUL Undergraduate Project 2014).
- Monica Dragan (Google Summer of Code 2014).
- Lawrence John Maynard. BSc student of Genetics at Queen Mary University of London. My interests include systems, programming, bioinformatics, longevity, and ecology.