Diana Arseni
Diana graduated with an MSci in Biomedicine from the University of Lancaster in 2016. During her PhD at the University of Glasgow and AstraZeneca, she investigated mechanisms through which microglia mediate tissue damage in the context of multiple sclerosis. In 2020, she started her postdoc at the MRC-LMB in the lab of Ben Ryskeldi-Falcon, where she used cryo-electron microscopy to elucidate the structure of TDP-43 filaments in neurodegenerative diseases. In November 2024, she started her own research group in the Neurobiology Division at the MRC-LMB. Her group studies mechanisms of brain health, ageing, and disease with a focus on the lysosomal protein transmembrane protein 106B (TMEM106B) which forms amyloids in the brain in an age-dependent manner.
Neurobiology division at the MRC-LMB
John Diffley
John Diffley was born and raised in the New York City area. He obtained his B.A., M.S. and Ph.D. from New York University. John then worked as a postdoctoral fellow in Bruce Stillman’s laboratory at Cold Spring Harbor from 1984–1990, where he began working on yeast DNA replication. He moved to the Clare Hall Laboratories Imperial Cancer Research Fund in 1990 as a Junior Group Leader. He was promoted to Senior Group Leader in 1995. He became Director of the Clare Hall Laboratories and Deputy Director of the London Research Institute (Cancer Research UK) in 2006. With the founding of the Francis Crick Institute in 2015, he became Associate Research Director with responsibility for junior researchers (Ph.D. students, postdoctoral fellows, etc.). In 1998 he was elected a member of the European Molecular Biology Organization (EMBO), in 2005 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society and in 2020 he was elected a Member of the National Academy of Sciences, USA. He won the Paul Marks Prize for Cancer Research in 2003, the Louis Jeantet Prize for Medicine in 2016 and the Canada Gairdner International Award in 2019. He currently serves on several scientific advisory boards, as well as national and international grant panels.
Chromosome Replication Lab at the Francis Crick Institute
Claire Higgins
Dr. Claire Higgins is a Reader, and Group Leader of the Skin Regeneration Laboratory in the Department of Bioengineering at Imperial College London. Her group uses interdisciplinary approaches to improve the holistic understanding of skin and hair, both in homeostatic conditions and after disease or injury, with the goal of identifying strategies to diagnose, treat or prevent skin disease or injury. A unique aspect of her research group is that all investigations use human tissue, bypassing the need to translate findings from other species prior to clinical translation. Some notable pieces of work from her group have shown how the hair follicle interacts with and influences the surrounding skin microenvironment, from scar tissue to sensory neurons. She is currently President of the European Hair Research Society and Vice President of the Institute of Trichologists. She is also on the research grants committees for the British Skin Foundation, Alopecia UK and the Royal Society
Dept. of Bioengineering at Imperial College London
Roni Levin Konisberg
Roni Levin Konisberg studied Biochemical Engineering at the Instituto Politécnico Nacional in Mexico City and went on to complete a Ph.D. in Biochemistry at the University of Toronto under the mentorship of Dr. Sergio Grinstein. His doctoral work focused on membrane trafficking and lipid signalling in macrophages. Following his Ph.D., he conducted postdoctoral research in the Department of Genetics at Stanford University with Dr. Mike Bassik, where he developed expertise in high-throughput genetic screening technologies. In 2025, he joined the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology (LMB) as a Group Leader in the Division of Cell Biology. His research group investigates the molecular physiology of phagocytic cells. His lab uses a combination of cell biology approaches and genetic screening to understand how these cells recognize, engulf, and process large amounts of diverse extracellular materials.
Cell Biology division at the MRC-LMB
Viktor Lukacs
Viktor Lukacs is an Assistant Professor and Wellcome Trust Career Development Fellow at the University of Leeds. He began his academic journey in medicine at Semmelweis University in Budapest, before earning a Ph.D. in Pharmacology, Physiology, and Neuroscience from Rutgers University, New Jersey. He then joined Scripps Research in La Jolla, working under Nobel Laureate Ardem Patapoutian, where he contributed to defining the physiological roles of Piezo ion channels—findings that helped lay the groundwork for the 2021 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. Since establishing his lab at Leeds in 2019, Dr. Lukacs has focused on pioneering molecular technologies in genomics and neuroscience, with multiple patent applications pending internationally for novel approaches in molecular evolution.
Wellcome Trust Career Development Fellow at the University of Leeds
Javier Pizarro-Cerda
Javier Pizarro-Cerda obtained a Ph.D. in Immunology at the Marseile-Luminy Immunology Centre investigating the intracellular adaptations to mammalian cells of the brucellosis agent Brucella abortus. He then joined the Institut Pasteur in Paris to study Listeria monocytogenes host-pathogen interactions. Since 2017 he is Associate Professor at Institut Pasteur where he is director of the Yersinia Research Unit and of the WHO Collaborating Centre for Plague (FRA-146) as well as deputy director of the French National Reference Laboratory ‘Plague and other yersiniosis’. His team currently investigates the biology and evolution of pathogenic members of the genus Yersinia, including the enteropathogens Y. pseudotuberculosis and Y. enterocolitica, as well as the plague bacillus Y. pestis. His public health activities include the implementation of novel molecular diagnostic strategies to track pathogenic Yersinia outbreaks and the development of a vaccine against plague.
Microbiology at the Institut Pasteur
José Zarco Jiménez
Dr. José Jiménez is a molecular biologist who obtained his Ph.D. in 2006 working for Spanish Research Council. He conducted postdoctoral stays at Harvard University (USA) and the Synthetic Biology Center at MIT (USA). José was appointed as Lecturer in Synthetic Biology in 2014 at the University of Surrey and joined the Dept. of Life Sciences at Imperial College London in 2020 where he was promoted to Reader in 2023. He is interested in a broad range of topics at the interphase between synthetic biology and evolution including environmental applications such as the valorisation of plastic waste.
Dept. of Life Sciences at Imperial College London
More speakers to be announced soon!
