Principal Investigator:



Teuta Pilizota (teuta.pilizota at ed.ac.uk) (CV)

Teuta obtained her undergraduate degree from the Department of Physics, University of Zagreb, and her PhD at the Department of Physics, University of Oxford (working with Richard Berry). She worked as a postdoctoral researcher at Lewis-Sigler Institute, Princeton University (with Josh Shaevitz) before joining the School of Biological Sciences, University of Edinburgh in 2013. In 2024 Teuta joined the Department of Physics, University of Cambridge, and is currently split between the two institutions.

Postdocs


Lucas Le Nagard (l l 7 9 3 at cam d ac d uk)

Lucas finished his undergraduate studies at ESPCI Paris with a major in biological physics, his MSc in physics at McMaster University, and his PhD in biological physics at the University of Edinburgh, School of Physics and Astronomy working with Wilson Poon
. He is currently interested in bacterial swimming and energy maintenance in various starvation conditions.
James Flewellen (James.Flewellen at ed.ac.uk)

James completed his PhD at the University of Oxford and took part in several exciting projects since. James is leading a project to explore the potential of our novel biosensor technology in a range of industries, including water supply, food and drink, medical diagnostics and environmental monitoring. He is the CEO and co-founder of Kahu Siliconbio a new spinout from our lab.
Saheli Mitra (s m 3 0 4 0 at cam d ac d uk)

Saheli finished her Bsc and Msc degree in physics at the University of Burdwan, West Bengal. She completed her PhD in soft matter physics at the Shiv Nadar University, and later her postdoc at Carnegie Mellon University looking at membrane structure and interactions in particular with microbial peptides. She is now looking into the role of perssure and surface interactions on membrane structure as well as at understanding the rheology of mucus.

Charuhansini Tvishamayi (c t 7 1 9 at cam d ac d uk)

Charuhansini finihsed her Bsc at Bangalore University and her PhD working with ShashiThutupalli at the National Centre for Biological Sciences at Tata Institute of Fundamental Research. She is interested in all things related to the influence of cytoplasmic content on bacterial growth rate as well as their dying.

PhD Students



Urte Puodziunaite (urte.puodziunaite at ed.ac.uk)

Urte finished her undergraduate degree at the School of Biological Sciences and her Msc at the School of Engineering, University of Edinburgh. She is working on automatically imaging microbial shape during growth and understanding the relationship between the shape and microbial physiology.

Diana Coroiu (co-supervised with Dr. Michael Chen) (D.Coroiu at sms.ed.ac.uk)

Diana finished her undergraduate degree in Biological Sciences at the University of Edinburgh, developing a strong interest in interdisciplinary sciences. She is now working on using the bacterial flagellar motor to sense electrochemical gradients and thus understand various types of stresses bacteria encounter.

Keshav Todi (co-supervised with Prof. Peter Swain) (K.Todi at sms.ed.ac.uk)

Keshav finished his undergraduate studies in biotechnology at Delhi Technological University and is currently working on understanding bacterial electrophysiology in E. coli.


Uriel Barboza Perez (uriel.barboza at ed d ac d uk>)

Uriel finished his undergraduate studies in engineering in biotechnology at the Monterrey Institute of Technology and Higher Education and his Msc in Systems and Synthetic Biology at the University of Edinburgh. He is currently working on understanding bacterial electrophysiology in E. coli.

Evelin Kurdi (ek661 at cam d ac d uk)

Evelin finished her undergraduate degree in Biological Sciences at the University of Edinburgh, developing a strong interest in engineering biology. She is now working on developing novel whole-cell biosensors and understanding allostery of chemoreceptors.

Ziyi Chen (zc388 at cam d ac d uk)

Ziyi holds two Bsc degrees, one from Beijing Institute of Technology in mechanical rngineering and the other from University of Manchaster in physics with theoretical physics. He also compelted Msc in theoretical physics from DAMPT, University of Cambridge, before joining us to work on theoretical aspects of bacterial electrophysiology.


Patricia Lazo Paravicini (pnl25 at cam d ac d uk>)

Patricia finished her undergraduate studies in physics at Universidad Mayor De San Andres, and compelted a postgraduate diploma and Msc from ICTP and Universite de Montpellier II - ISIM, resepctively. She is currently working on understanding bacterial flagellar motor mechanotrunsduction and it's releavance for electrophysiology of E. coli.

Master Students


Tommer Zilka

Tommer is an Msc by research student working on the energetics of dormant bacteria. He has completed his undergraduate degree at the School of Biological Sciences, University of Edinburgh.

Undergraduate Students

Zak El-Shirbiny, PartIII, Department of Physics, University of Cambridge

Lab Alumni

Postdocs:
Amritha Janardanan, Hardware R&D Lead at Kahu Siliconbio Edinburgh
James Broughton, Bioengineering R&D Lead at Kahu Siliconbio Edinburgh
Alex McVey, currently a co-founder and managing director with Ogi Biotech Edinburgh
Faris Sinjab, currently a staff engineer with Analog Devices Cambridge
Wei-Chang Lo, currently a postdoc in Keng-hui Lin's lab at Academia Sinica
Ricardo Fradique, currently working in cyber security
Erika Causa
Alex Scott
PhD students:
Eric Chapman, currently a postdoc in the lab of Claudia Igler at University of Manchaster
Nico Tormena, currenty an application engineer at Nunano, Bristol
Mark Zurbruegg, currently a scientist at Biomodal, Cambridge
Tommy Schmidlechner, currently working with an IT company in the Netherlands
Jack Hocking, currently an R&D scientist at Ogi Biotech Edinburgh
Guillaume Terradot, currently back with us
Ekaterina Krasnopeeva, currently a posdoc in Calin Guet's lab at IST
Smitha Hegde, currently an associate lecturer at Anglia Ruskin University, UK
Dario Miroli, currently at DSTL
Leonardo Mancini, currently an assistant professor running his own lab at University of Glasgow.
Keiran Stevenson, currently a postdoc in Minsu Kim's lab at Emory University
Eric Thorand, currently a scientist with BioClavis, Glasgow.
Jerko Rosko, currently a senior software developer at University of Oxford
.
Research Assistants:
Francesca Galdi, currently a senior engineer at Analog Devices, Edinburgh

Undergraduate students:
Anna Sleigh, University of Cambridge, summer student (Department of Physics) Tommer Zilka, University of Edinburgh, Honours Student (Biochemistry)
Diana Coroiu, University of Edinburgh, Honours Student (Biochemistry)
JingJin Han, University of Edinburgh, School of Biological Sciences, Honours student (biotechnology)
Urte Puodziunaite, University of Edinburgh, Honours Student (Biochemistry)
Jill Howie, University of Glasgow, MEneg in Biomedical Engineering
Lisa Kahl, Honours student (Biotechnology)
Dale Wyllie (Co-supervised with Wilson Poon)
Anna Stikane, Honours Student (Biotechnology)
Charlotte Lilley, Honours Student (Biotechnology)
Ryoto Takeuchi, Honours Student (Biochemistry)
Kate Lord, Honours Student (Biotechnology)
Jack Twentyman, Honours Student (Biotechnology)
Rachel Mellon, summer project student
Chong Kean Chua, Honours Student (Biotechnology)
Adam Makepeace, Honours Student (Biotechnology)
Master students:
Craig McAuliffe, University of Edinburgh, School of Biological Sciences, Master student in Biotechnology
Uriel Baroboza Perez (University of Edinburgh, Master student in Synthetic and Systems Biology)
Yubing Shang (University of Edinburgh, Master student in Biotechnology)
James Freed (co-supervised with Prof. Susan Rosser, University of Edinburgh, Master with research)
Renata Buda, ERASMUS Master student (University of Zagreb)
Zhu Zian (University of Edinburgh, Master student in Biotechnology)
Joe Bradley (School of Physics and Astronomy, co-supervised with Prof. Wilson Poon)
Kathrine Murie (School of Physics and Astronomy, co-supervised with Dr. Richard Blythe and Dr. Naomi Nakayama)
Ralph Pompeus (School of Physics and Astronomy)
Visiting students:
Marijana Krivic (University of Zagreb, Department of Electrical Engineering and Computing)
Juan Carlos Arias Castro (Universidad de los Andes, Colombia; at the time PhD student in the lab of Juan Manuel Pedraza)
Liu Yunxiao (Peking University, in colaboration with Bai Fan)
Yang Jin (Peking University, in colaboration with Bai Fan)
Dejan Kunovac (University of Zagreb, in colaboration with Matko Gluncic)

Our collaborators

Current

Chien-Jung Lo, Academia Sinica and National Central University, Taiwan
Wilson Poon, Univeristy of Edinburgh, UK
Filippo Menolascina, University of Edinburgh, UK
Michael Chen, University of Edinburgh, UK
Michel Maharbiz, University of California Berkeley, USA
Ariel Amir, Weizmann Institute of Science, Israel
Terry Hwa, University of California San Diego, USA
Sven van Teellelen, Université de Montréal, Canada
Georg Fritz, University of Western Australia, Australia
Pietro Cicuta, University of Cambridge, UK
Aidan Brown, Univeristy of Edinburgh, UK
Iain Hathorn, Univeristy of Edinburgh and NHS Scotland, UK

Past

Bartek Waclaw, Univeristy of Edinburgh, UK
Clare Bryant, University of Cambridge, UK
Eric Lauga, University of Cambridge, UK
Meriem El Karoui, Univeristy of Edinburgh, UK
Fan Bai, Peking University, China
Rosalind Allen, University of Edinburgh, UK
Marc Erhardt, Helmholtz Centre for Infection Research, Germany
Naomi Nakayama, University of Edinburgh, UK
Pao-Yang Chen, Institute of Plant and Microbial Biology, Academia Sinica, Taiwan
Peter Swain, University of Edinburgh, UK
Burak Okumus (Paulsson Lab), Harvard University, USA
Matko Gluncic, University of Zagreb, Croatia
Peter Lund, University of Birmingham, UK
Malcolm Walkinshaw, University of Edinburgh, UK
Munehiro Asally, University of Warwick, UK
Tobias Bollenbach, University of Koln, Germany
Ya-Tang Yang, National Tsing Hua Univerisity, Taiwan
Tanniemola Liverpool, University of Bristol, UK
Andela Saric, University College London, UK
Morgan Beeby, Imperial College London, UK
Susan Rosser, University of Edinburgh, UK
Orkun Soyer, University of Warwick, UK

Open Positions

Interested PhD student candidates should contact Teuta directly with questions. Candidates with a background in physics, applied mathematics, engineering or biology are particularly welcome. If your background is biology, please be advised that you should have taken sufficient number of courses in mathematics and physics. If your background is chemistry and you are keen to learn biophysics and molecular biology techniques please get in touch as well. Please note, the deadlines for applications for the University of Cambridge with studentships incluced are in December and there are various sources of funding available. The deadlines for self-funded studnets or those with external scholarships are longer. Please check the departmental webpage for more details. We will no loner be taking PhD students at Univeristy of Edinburgh.


Currently the lab has no open postdoctoral positions. However, postdoctoral candidates interested in securing their own fellowships are always welcome to contact Teuta direclty to discuss the options. Undergraduate or master students please email Teuta directly if you are interested in joining us.


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