Group Head
Magdalena Zernicka-Goetz
Magdalena carried out her Ph.D. at the University of Warsaw, Poland, under supervision of Andrzej Tarkowski. In 1993 she received a Promising Young Scientist Prize from Foundation for Polish Science. She came to Cambridge in 1995 to join Martin Evans group with the long-term aim of studying the mechanisms of regulative nature of development and spatial patterning in the mouse embryo. In 1997 she was awarded a Senior Research Fellowship from the Lister Institute to start her independent group at the Wellcome Trust/Cancer Research UK Gurdon Institute in Cambridge. In 2001 she received the Young Investigator Award from EMBO and then became a Wellcome Senior Research Fellow. In 2007 she was elected to EMBO membership. In 2010, she became a Professor of Mammalian Development and Stem Cell Biology. In 2013 she became Fellow of British Academy of Medical Science.
Post-doctoral Scientists
Maciej Meglicki
Maciej is our Lab Manager. Maciej completed his PhD at the University of Warsaw in the Department of Embryology, where he studied the regulation of pericentric heterochromatin structure in mouse embryo development. After his PhD, Maciej spent few years in the drug development field working in phase II and III clinical trials as a Clinical Research Associate and Clinical Study Manager. He joined Magda’s group in 2020 to study sex differences and cell fate decisions in preimplantation mouse development.
Carlos Ganter
Carlos completed a PhD in neural development at the Florey Institute of Neuroscience and Mental Health, Melbourne, Australia with a focus on deriving dopamine neurons from pluripotent stem cells to study and treat neurodegenerative disorders. His work in the Zernicka-Goetz lab focuses on modelling human embryonic development in vitro.
Joseph Mathew Kalappurakkal
Joey completed his master’s in Regenerative Medicine from Manipal University, India. He completed his PhD in cell biology in the laboratory of Prof. Satyajit Mayor at NCBS, India. His core research interests are in cell signalling and biophysics. In Magda’s lab, he is looking at the interplay between substrate mechanics and chemical signalling drives during early mammalian development, supported by an EMBO fellowship.
PhD Students
Lisa Iwamoto-Stohl
Lisa is an MB/PhD student at the University of Cambridge, having completed her BA(Hons) in 2018. She joined the lab in 2019 and is studying mouse pre-implantation development and models of aneuploid mosaicism, supported by the Rosetrees Trust and the Frank Edward Elmore Fund.
Kasey Y.C. Lau
Kasey joined the lab in 2019 after completing her Bachelor’s degree at the University of Hong Kong. She is working on developing an in vitro model of mouse post-implantation development. She receives a scholarship jointly funded by the Croucher Foundation and the Cambridge Trust.
Adiyant Lamba
Adiyant Lamba completed his BA Honours degree in Natural Sciences from the University of Cambridge. He joined Magda’s lab in 2019 to study polarity and patterning in the early mouse embryo, supported by the Medical Research Council and the Vice Chancellor Award Fund.
Bailey Weatherbee
Bailey Weatherbee graduated with an honors bachelors degree in biological sciences from the University of Delaware, USA. She joined the lab in 2019 to study post-implantation development supported by the Gates Cambridge Trust.
Research Associate / Senior Lab Technician / Personal Assistant
Catherine King
Catherine joined us in July 2022 soon after completing her BA + MSci in Natural Sciences at the University of Cambridge. She supports the lab in everyday tasks and provides technical assistance to the research group.
Former Group Members
Antonia Weberling (former PhD Student).
Charlotte Handford (Former PhD Student). Post-Doc at MZG lab, Caltech
Kirsty Mackinlay (Former PhD Student). Programme Officer, Centre for Global Equality, Cambridge.
Gianluca Amadei (Former Post-Doc). Group Leader, University of Padua.
Dilan Gokyer (Former Lab Technician and PA). Post-Doc at Northwestern University – The Feinberg School of Medicine.
Lauren Hulme (Former Lab Technician and PA). Natural sciences student at the University of Cambridge.
Matteo Mole (Former Post-Doc). Post-Doc at The Babraham Institute, Cambridge.
Meng Zhu (Former Post-Doc). Post-Doc at Harvard University.
Hannah Mudge (Former Lab technician and PA). Medical Student at Southhampton.
Marta Shahbazi (Former Post-Doc). Group Leader, MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology.
Christos Kyprianou (Former PhD Student). Community Manager at Journal of Cell Science at The Company of Biologists.
Neophytos Christodoulou (Former Post-Doc). University of Cyprus, Department of Biological Sciences, Cell and Developmental Biology Laboratory.
Lorenzo Carlo Orietti (Former PhD Student). Master of International Healthcare Management, Economics and Policy at Bocconi University of Milan.
Shruti Singla (Former PhD Student). Senior Associate Consultant at Cambridge Healthcare Research (CMR).
Hannah Sharplin (Former Lab Technician and PA). Student at Loughborough University, UK.
Agnieszka Jedrusik (Former Post-Doc). Clinical Research Scientist at Cambridge Healthcare Research (CMR) Surgical.
Juliet Tyndall (Former Lab Technician and PA). Medical student at the University of Edinburgh, UK.
Francesco Antonica (Former Post-Doc). Post-Doc, Centre for Integrative Biology – CIBIO, University of Trento.
Ania Hupalowska (Former Post-Doc). Lead Data Visualization Designer at Genentech.
Sarah Harrison (Former PhD Student). Research Liaison Manager. Department for Health and Social Care. London, UK.
Rosie Larter (Former Lab Technician and PA). Biology student at the University of Oxford, UK.
Georgie Hudson (Former Lab Technician and PA). Medical student.
Mubeen Goolam (Former PhD Student). Lecturer in Human Biology, University of Cape Town, South Africa.
Sanna Vuoristo (Former Post-Doc). Principal Investigator, University of Helsinki.
Bernhard Strauss (a joint Post-Doc between Zernicka-Goetz and Jon Pines’ lab). Post-Doc with Jon Pines, Cambridge.
Paula Coelho (a joint fellow Post-Doc between Magdalena and David Glover’s lab). Research Associate at David Glover’s Lab, Cambridge.
Sarah Graham (Former Post-Doc). Medical Writer with Oxford PharmaGenesis.
Gaelle Recher (Former Post-Doc). CNRS Researcher, Bordeaux, France.
Ivan Bedzhov (Former Post-Doc). Principal Investigator at Max Planck Institute for Molecular Biomedicine, Munster, Germany.
Monika Bialecka (Former Post-Doc). Post-Doc at the University of Leiden, Netherlands.
Chuen Yan Leung (Former PhD Student). Post Doc with Kenneth Chien, Integrated Cardio Metabolic Center, Karolinska Institute.
Maryna Panamarova (Former PhD Student). Post-Doc at King’s College London.
Maria Skamagki (Former PhD Student). Post-Doc with Kitai Kim, Sloan-Kettering Institute. New York.
Anna Ajduk (Former Post-Doc). Associate Professor at Warsaw University.
Samantha Morris (Former Post-Doc). Assistant Professor of Genetics, and Developmental Biology at Washington University School of Medicine, USA.
Roy Teo (Former PhD Student). Senior Manager at Singapore Economic Development Board (EDB).
Seema Grewal (Former Post-Doc). Reviews editor at Development.
Alex Bruce (Former Post-Doc). Group Leader. University of South Bohemia. Czech Republic.
Emlyn Parfitt (Former PhD Student). Medical director at ClinicalMind, NYC.
Rui Martins (Former Post-Doc). Postdoctoral Researcher Development Manager at Queen Mary, University of London.
Qiang Wu (Former Post-Doc). Assistant Professor, Singapore.
Maria Elena Torres-Padilla (Former Post-Doc). Director of the Institute of Epigenetics and Stem Cells (IES) at the Helmholtz Zentrum München.
Lucy Richardson (Former PhD Student). Clinical Scientist in Herts & Essex Fertility Centre.
Lee Carpenter (Former Post-doc). Director hiPSC Therapies at GlaxoSmithKline (GSK).
Stephen Frankenberg (Former Post-Doc). Research Associate at University of Melbourne.
Dionne Gray (Former Research Assistant). Research assistant at the Department of Anatomy, University of Cambridge.
Seiki Haraguchi(Former Post-Doc). Senior Scientist at Chiba Cancer Center Research Institute, Chiba, Japan.
Karin Lyke-Anderesen (Former Post-Doc). Adjunkt, Assistant Professor, Department of Molecular Biology, Aarhus University, Denmark.
Sigolene Meilhac (Former Post-Doc). Chargée de Recherche à l’Institut Pasteur, Paris, France.
Daniel Mesnard (Former PhD student). Post-doc with Dr. Daniel Constam, ISREC, Lausanne, Switzerland.
Catherine Moore (Former PhD Student). Post-doc with Prof. Phil Ingham at University of Sheffield, United Kingdom.
Jie Na (Former Post-Doc). Associate Professor at School of Medicine, Tsinghua University, Beijing, China.
Karolina Piotrowska-Nitsche (Former Post-Doc). Core Director at Mouse Transgenic and Gene Targeting Core, Emory University, Atlanta, USA.
Berenika Plusa (Former Post-Doc). Lecturer at the Division of Developmental Biology & Medicine, The University of Manchester.
Miguel Soares (Former Post-Doc). Post-doc with Dr. Anne Fergunson-Smith, Department of Anatomy, University of Cambridge.
Roberta Weber (Former research assistant). London, United Kingdom.
Florence Wianny (Former Post-Doc). Chargée de Recherche INSERM atDepartment of Stem Cells and Cortical Development, Lyon, France.
Krzysztof Wicher (Former Post-Doc). Scientist at MedImmune, Cambridge, UK.
The Cambridge lab was established in 1997.
Magdalena Zernicka-Goetz Lab 