Phil Wigge started the lab in January 2005 at the John Innes Centre in Norwich where he was a project leader before being hired to work in the new Sainsbury Laboratory in 2012. Previously, Phil had been a junior group leader with Detlef Weigel at the MPI-Tuebingen following a 2 year postdoc at the Salk, also with Detlef. Phil came to plants after doing his Ph.D on budding yeast cell biology, in Cambridge where he learnt how hard biochemistry was. Phil has since taken up developmental genetics. Phil did his undergraduate work at Oxford University in the Biochemistry department. Phil got his start in molecular biology working as an undergraduate in Dave Sherratt's lab, studying site-specific recombination.
Matt Box was the first postdoc to start in the new lab in Cambridge. Before joining us, Matt worked with Caroline Dean at the JIC. Matt did his PhD with Beverley Glover in the Department of Plant Sciences, so he's a native to Cambridge! Matt is working on natural variation and adaptation to different climates and next-generation sequencing approaches. You can read more about his scientific interests here.
Manoj Kumar joined us after his PhD in the lab of Arp Schnittger, where he studied CDKs, seed development and natural variation. Manoj joined Arp's lab in Cologne, and then moved to Strasbourg, so he decided he'd add an extra European country to his itinerary. Manoj is working on temperature sensing screens and a number of other projects!
Emma Sedivy is a native of Canada and Rhode Island. Emma is working with us for one year following her BS in Biology from Stanford, where she worked on phototropic cyanobacteria in Devaki Bhaya's lab in Carnegie. Emma is going to go on to graduate school at MIT in the fall of 2013, but she was keen to sample life and plants on this side of the pond. Emma's working on a proteomics project and is our super-organiser who gets everyone to do their lab jobs!
Jaehoon Jung is a postdoc from Seoul, Korea. Previously, Jaehoon did his PhD in the lab of Chung-Mo Park where he studied flowering time, looking at the role of microRNAs and RNA binding proteins such as FCA. Jaehoon is working with Anna on the regulation of H2A.Z-nucleosomes by temperature
Yanniv Dorone is an ERASMUS student from ENS Lyon where he is doing his Masters. Before joining us, Yanniv worked in the Bomblies Laboratory studying meiosis in tetraploids. Yanniv is working with Manoj and Seong cloning temperature sensing mutants.
Alan
Itakura is our most globetrotting lab member.
Originally from California, he studied for his BSc at Imperial College London
and a Bioscience Masters in King Abdullah University of Science and Techology
(KAUST). When not at the bench, Alan divides his time between LA and Japan. We
all want his airmiles. Alan worked with Manoj isolating temperature-sensing
mutants.
Marc Jones is originally from Wales, and studying Natural Sciences at Cambridge. Marc worked with Matt Box in the summer of 2012 studying natural variation in temperature perception pathways in the MAGIC lines. A self-confessed computer aficionado, Marc does plant phenotyping by day and coding by night.
Seong Jeon Yoo studied for his PhD with Weigelworld alum Jihoon Ahn in Seoul. Seong has been working on the control of flowering and temperature perception. As part of his PhD, he studied the role of SVP in mediating temperature signals that control flowering in Arabidopsis. Seong is working with Manoj to isolate new mutants in the temperature perception pathways.
Anna Brestovitsky is from Israel. Anna did her PhD and first postdoc at the Technion, working in the Kleinberger lab studying Adenovirus E4orf4 protein, and its role in chromatin remodelling. Anna, our biochemistry wizard, is a joint postdoc hosted by Daniela Rhodes at the MRC-LMB. Anna is also our punting champion.
Nick Garidis is a Natural Sciences undergraduate who has worked with us in the summer of 2012 screening temperature sensing mutants. Before joining us, Nick worked in David Baulcombe’s lab identifying microRNA targets in Tomato
Nick Pullen is a Ph.D student working jointly with the Richard Morris group and the Wigge Lab. Nick got his degree in Mathematics from UEA, and instead of becoming enormously wealthy in the City of London, he decided he'd much rather model how plants achieve sharp expression boundaries during development. Nick grew up on a real farm, so unlike most of the rest of us, he knows about real crops.
Coming soon: We're thrilled that the following people are joining us in the next few months!
Viktoriya Coneva
Varodom Charoensawan
Patrick Dickinson
Sandra Cortijo
David Schoepfer
Welcome, it's an honour we're going to be working together.