Catherine Jopling is an Associate Professor of RNA Biology at the University Nottingham.

Catherine graduated with a BSc in Biochemistry from the University of Bristol and a PhD in Biochemistry from the University of Leicester, supervised by Professor Anne Willis. She was then awarded a Wellcome Trust International Prize Fellowship to undertake postdoctoral research at Stanford University, USA, with Professor Peter Sarnow, where she identified an essential role for liver specific microRNA-122 in hepatitis C virus replication. She completed her postdoctoral research at the University of Cambridge and started her own group, initially funded by a BBSRC David Phillips Fellowship, at the University of Nottingham. Her group’s research focuses on microRNA biogenesis and function.

Stephen’s research focuses on using structural biology to better understand protein structure and function and how this can underpin therapeutic development. He graduated from the University of Sheffield with a BSc in Biochemistry and Microbiology and subsequently studied for a PhD in X-ray crystallography within the group of Prof David Rice also at the University of Sheffield. He moved to the University of Leeds to do a post-doctoral position in single particle cryoEM. After receiving an MRC-CDA fellowship he took on a lectureship at the University of Leeds where he continues to work on membrane protein structural biology and the development of time-resolved methodologies.

Mike's main interest is the role of the plant cytoskeleton and trafficking in shaping and responding to cell polarity cues in plant cells. His core research question is “how do cell transport systems reconfigure to respond to new, localised stimuli?” To achieve this, Mike's research group use microbes as a stimulus to better understand plant immune defence responses. The group interacts with a number of materials scientists and other disciplines for creating their experimental setups, for data analysis and for computational modelling of sub-cellular dynamics.

Keywords: Cytoskeleton, plants, polarity, phytopathology

Tim is currently Professor and Chair of Cardiovascular Biology at the Hull York Medical School Centre for Biomedicine at the University of Hull, UK. His research examines the cell signalling mechanisms responsible for the development of cardiovascular disease.

Tim received a BSc (Hons) in Biochemistry from the University of Manchester, and a PhD in Biochemistry from the University of Glasgow under the direction of Professor Miles Houslay. During his post-doctoral studies, he examined the molecular basis of adenosine receptor desensitisation, securing an American Heart Association Postdoctoral Research Fellowship. He then returned to Glasgow in 1997 as a Lecturer in Biochemistry before moving to the University of Bradford to take up a Chair in Pharmacology in 2015.

Keywords: Cytokine signalling, vascular biology, inflammation, JAK-STAT

Irundika’s research interests are on redox biology related to chronic inflammatory diseases. She uses lipidomic tools to identify modified lipid biomarkers in ageing and disease. She graduated from the University of Colombo, Sri Lanka with a BSc in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology. She completed Immunology MSc in Brunel University, UK followed by a PhD from Aston University, UK. During her post-doctoral and Fellowship work at Aston University, she worked on metabolic pathways that leads to chronic inflammation and specialised on lipidomic studies and biomarker analysis. She is currently a lecturer at Aston medical school. She acts as the chair of Biochemical Society Theme Panel-Research Area VI.

Keywords: Redox Biology, Lipidomics, Biomarkers