WHAT WE DO

We are a collaboratory network

We are the London Infection Postdoc Network, a multi-institutional platform that supports scientific and social exchange among young career researchers working on Infection Biology in London.

We organise events and create virtual spaces that help postdocs to:

Foster knowledge and technical exchange.
Increase collaborations.
Present and expose their work to a bigger, like-minded critical audience.
Expand networking opportunities.
Promote and adverse opportunities for career development.
Raise and discuss career related issues.

WHO WE ARE

LIPN Committee

We are postdocs from various academic institutes in London working on infection biology (virus, bacteria, parasites).

FRANCIS CRICK INSTITUTE

Jakson Luk
Janina Muench
Marion Delphin

IMPERIAL COLLEGE LONDON

Julia Sánchez Garrido

BIRBECK, UNIVERSITY OF LONDON

Natalie Al-Otaibi

LONDON SCHOOL OF HYGIENE AND TROPICAL MEDICINE

Dominik Brokatzky
Ana Teresa López Jiménez

UNIVERSITY COLLEGE LONDON

Ann-Kathrin Reuschl
Ziqi Zhou
Oscar Torres

QUEEN MARY UNIVERSITY OF LONDON

Josephine Nemegeer

LANCASTER UNIVERSITY

Caroline Weight

CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY

Felix Scharte (MRC-LMB)

KING'S COLLEGE LONDON

Andrea Majstorovic

PAST MEMBERS:

Leo Swadling (UCL)

Margarida Castro-Gomes (LSHTM)

Tapoka Mkandawire (Francis Crick)

Valwynne Faulkner (Francis Crick)

Marion Delphin (she/her)

The Francis Crick Institute

Marion Delphin completed her PhD under the direction of Dr. Julie Lucifora, in the HepVir team headed up by Dr. David Durantel (CIRI, Lyon - France) on the role of liver macrophages in the chronic infection by the Hepatitis B Virus (HBV). She is now undertaking a postdoctoral position in Prof. Philippa Matthews's team at the Francis Crick Institute, working on the impact of HBV sequence diversity on the immune system and subsequent liver diseases outcomes.

https://www.crick.ac.uk/research/find-a-researcher/marion-delphin

@MarionDelphin

Zoe Dyson (she/her)

London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine

Zoe Anne Dyson is an Assistant Professor within LSHTM’s Department of Infection Biology working to establish the TyphiNET (https://typhi.net) and AMRnet online Antimicrobial Resistance (AMR) surveillance platforms. Zoe is a computational and laboratory microbiologist specialising in understanding the genetic epidemiology, transmission dynamics, spread, and evolution of antimicrobial resistance in the bacterial agents that cause enteric fever (Salmonella Typhi and Paratyphi A). Zoe has a BComp/BAppSc (Hons) majoring in Computer Science and Biotechnology, and a PhD in Microbiology. Zoe is a founder and coordinator of the Global Typhoid Genomics Consortium (typoidgenomics.org), and an editor for the journal mSystems.

Staff profile: https://www.lshtm.ac.uk/aboutus/people/dyson.zoe

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/zoe-dyson-9b2752b7/

Twitter/X: @msmicrobiocode

Ziqi Zhou

University College London

Ziqi Zhou did her PhD training with Malik Peiris at the University of Hong Kong. Her PhD research focused on unravelling a fascinating mystery: Why were there no reported cases of Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS) in humans in Africa? To shed light on it, she genetically and phenotypically characterized camel MERS-CoVs obtained by African surveillance studies, in comparison with those infecting humans in the Arabian Peninsula. Now she continues her virology journey on coronaviruses as a Postdoc in Greg Towers’s lab in UCL. She's thrilled to explore how virus-host response of coronaviruses impact their ability to cause pandemic and pathogenicity in humans.

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ziqi-zhou-6210a1100/

Twitter: @ZiqiZhou13

Caroline Weight (she/her)

Lancaster University

Caroline received her PhD from the Institute of Food Research and the University of East Anglia working on the infection mechanisms of Toxoplasma gondii in the small intestine. She undertook her first postdoctoral position at Emory University, Atlanta USA investigating tight junction protein signalling in the context of Inflammatory Bowel Disease. Following on, she translated her signalling work experience to T cell biology at Lund University in Sweden, under sponsorship from the Wenner Gren Foundation. Caroline was a Senior Research Fellow in Prof. Heyderman’s lab at UCL from 2015-2023 where her research focussed on the control of colonisation of Streptococcus pneumoniae by the human nasopharyngeal epithelium. Caroline is now an independent group leader and Lecturer in Biomedical and Life Sciences at Lancaster University. Her lab contributes towards the development of technological advancements to the field of respiratory infection in humans.

Staff profile: https://www.lancaster.ac.uk/health-and-medicine/about-us/people/caroline-weight

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/caroline-weight-955844189

Twitter/X: @weightcaroline

Jakson Luk (he/him)

The Francis Crick Institute

Jakson received his MPhil at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, and later pursued his PhD at the Institut Pasteur, Paris. During his study at Institut Pasteur, he was a member of the Unité Dynamique des Interactions Hôte-Pathogène, under the supervision of Jost Enninga. His work focused on the development of multiplex fluorescent systems to study the different intracellular behaviours of Salmonella. In Fall 2020, Jakson defended his thesis and moved across the English Channel to join the Host-Pathogen Interactions in Tuberculosis Laboratory at The Francis Crick Institute, London. Here, Jakson works on different interdisciplinary systems to understand the host-pathogen interactions in Tuberculosis, by applying his skillset ranging from molecular genetics to high-content imaging.

Profession website: https://scholars.croucher.org.hk/scholars/chak-hon-jakson-luk

X: @LukJakson https://twitter.com/LukJakson

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jakson-luk-2baa95114/

Julia Sanchez-Garrido (she/her)

Imperial College London

Julia did her PhD at Imperial College London, under Dr. Avinash Shenoy in the dept of Infectious Diseases. During her PhD she studied the role of caspase substrates in caspase-mediated signalling cascades, focussing on caspase-1, mainly linked to inflammasome activation, and caspase-8, involved in tissue development, apoptosis and immunomodulation. Julia is now a postdoctoral researcher in the department of Life Sciences with Professor Gad Frankel, working on host-pathogen dynamics at the mucosal interface in two different in vivo models : Citrobacter rodentium in the gut and Klebsiella pneumoniae in the lung. C. rodentium is a natural mouse-adapted pathogen that causes colitis in a type III secretion injectisome dependent manner, while K. pneumoniae on the other hand relies on antimicrobial resistance (AMR) genes and virulence factors such as its capsule to escape our defences and cause disease. Julia also is a departmental postdoc representative at Imperial, and really enjoys science outreach , both within the college and outside (e.g. https://www.nativescientists.org/ and going to schools to give short talks).

Staff profile: https://www.imperial.ac.uk/people/julia.sanchez-garrido08 (She is not a lab manager!)

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/julia-s%C3%A1nchez-garrido-542a1366/

Twitter/X: @JuliaSanchezBio

Natalie Al-Otaibi (she/her)

Birkbeck, University of London

Natalie Al-Otaibi completed her PhD with Dr. Julien Bergeron at the University of Sheffield in structural biology, namely cryo-EM of bacterial flagella and moved along with Dr. Bergeron to King’s College London to expand on this topic as a postdoctoral researcher. She is now on her second post doctoral researcher role at the lab of Professor Gabriel Waksman at Birkbeck, studying the structure and functionality of the Type IV secretion system in E.coli. Her fields of interest include cryo-EM, structure and function of bacterial macromolecular structures and antibiotic resistance mechanisms involving the Type IV secretion system.

Staff profile: https://www.bbk.ac.uk/our-staff/#overview

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/natalie-al-otaibi/

Twitter/X: @Natalie_Otaibi

Josephine Nemegeer (she/her)

Blizard Institute, Queen Mary University of London

Josephine obtained her PhD at the nucleic acid immunity lab under supervision of dr. Jonathan Maelfait and dr. Peter Vandenabeele in the Inflammation research center connected to Ghent University. Her work focussed on the activation mechanism of nucleic acid sensor ZBP1 during viral infection. Josephine is now working as a postdoctoral researcher at the Blizard institute (QMUL) under Dr. Pierre Maillard. The focus of her project is studying the role of RNA interference, and in particular Dicer, during viral infections. Her main interests are virology, innate immunity and confocal microscopy techniques.

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/josephine-nemegeer-79a176165/

Ann-Kathrin (AK) Reuschl (she/her)

University College London

As an infection immunologist, AK’s research focuses on understanding how pathogens and our immune system interact and affect each other. During her PhD at Imperial College London, she developed a research programme combining human ex vivo sampling with in vitro cell culture models to decipher the role of airway epithelial cells in the susceptibility to Mtb-infection. In her current role as a Research Associate in Prof Clare Jolly’s lab at UCL, she dissects native host-pathogen interactions between pandemic viruses and their target cells with a focus on HIV-1 and SARS-CoV-2.

Staff profile: https://profiles.ucl.ac.uk/57774-annkathrin-reuschl/about

Twitter: @akreuschl

Ana Teresa López Jiménez (she/her)

London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine

Ana Teresa López Jiménez is a cellular microbiologist with a passion for microscopy.

She obtained her PhD at the University of Geneva (Switzerland) under the supervision of Prof. Thierry Soldati, working on mechanisms of membrane damage and repair during infection.

She joined the lab of Prof. Serge Mostowy at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine supported by a SNSF Early.Postdoc Mobility fellowship and a Marie Skolowdoska Curie fellowship. Here, Ana works to develop innovative biochemical and microscopy approaches to study Shigella flexneri infection.

Ana led the original efforts to found the London Infection Postdoc Network and acted as President for 2 years (2021-2023).

@ATLopezJimenez

Oscar Enrique Torres Montaguth (he/him)

University College London

Oscar is a Research Fellow at UCL Great Ormond Street Institute of Child Health. He received his PhD in Bioscience Engineering from KU Leuven in 2018 working on the characterisation of bacterial defence systems. In 2019, Oscar joined the Protein-DNA interactions unit at the University of Bristol where he focused on the development of NGS methods for the study and characterisation of prokaryotic endonucleases and methyltransferases. In 2022, he joined UCL and is currently working on the development and standardization of clinical metagenomics and viral genomics workflows.

Staff profile:https://profiles.ucl.ac.uk/89050-oscar-enrique-torres-montaguth

Twitter:@oscart32

Felix Scharte (he/him)

MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology, Cambridge

Felix obtained his PhD in Osnabrück, Germany, studying virulence factors of typhoidal Salmonella in the lab of Michael Hensel. He discovered flagella-mediated cytosolic motility of intracellular Salmonella Paratyphi A and investigated its role in evasion of cell-autonomous immune response. To dive deeper into this topic he joined the lab of Felix Randow at the MRC LMB in Cambridge as a Walter Benjamin Fellow of the German Research Foundation to study how guanylate-binding proteins (GBPs) attack cytosol-invading bacteria. He is using a whole genome CRISPR screening approach to identify candidates involved in processing and regulation of GBPs and bacteria-induced pyroptosis.

Linkedin: www.linkedin.com/in/fscharte

Twitter: @Scha_Fe