
Research Area III - Energy and Metabolism
Research Area III covers the broad areas of mitochondria, membrane transport, metabolic pathways and networks, photosynthesis, free radicals, microbial bioenergetics and metabolism, electron transfer proteins, metabolism and metabolic diseases and metals in biology.
Get involved!
Research Area III - Energy and Metabolism
9 members

Nicholas Morton
Nicolas's research aims to identify the causes of one of the greatest healthcare challenges facing global society: the obesity pandemic. He leverages population human genetics and preclinical models to identify and develop potential new therapeutic targets for “civilisation diseases” associated with obesity, such as type 2 diabetes that are further driven by our advancing population age. Nicolas works with government, charity, education/public engagement, and industry stakeholders.
Keywords: Obesity, diabetes, genetics, gene discovery, pre-clinical modelling

Jamie Blaza
Jamie Blaza

Keywords: Biophysics, Structural Biology, Bioenergetics, Enzymology, Metabolism, Microbiology, Biochemical techniques & resources, Biotechnology, Instrumentation & Devices, Cell Membranes, Excitation & Transport

Animesh Acharjee
Animesh Acharjee
Acharjee’ s research focuses on integrative multi omics and multi modal analytics.
He did his undergraduate degree in Electrical Engineering from North Eastern Regional Institute of Technology, Itanagar, India and Masters in Bioinformatics from Institute of Bioinformatics and Applied Biotechnology, Bangalore, India. After his Masters, he earned his PhD from Wageningen University, The Netherlands, on applied machine learning and data analysis.
After his PhD he moved to Lyon, France, for his post-doctoral study with Synergie Lyon Cancer Centre as a Biostatistician where he extensively worked on big data analytics, cloud computing. After his post-doctoral study, he was offered a scientist position with BASF Cropdesign, Belgium.
His research interests include integrative data analytics, predictive biomarker discovery, bioinformatics methods for diagnostics and network biology. Throughout his career, he was offered many fellowships from British Council, Dutch Government and Newton fellowships.
Keywords: Multiomics, Diagnostics, Network medicine, Translational medicine

Sara Anjomani-Virmouni
Sara Anjomani-Virmouni

Keywords: Neurodegeneration, Ataxia, Genetics, Genomics, Epigenetics, Cell Biology, Cellular Signalling, Mitochondrial Function, Metabolism, Oxidative Stress, Transgenic Mouse Models

Volker Behrends
Volker Behrends
Volker Behrends received his first degree in Biology from the University of Göttingen in Germany, a MRes in Biomedical Research and a PhD in Microbial Metabolism from Imperial College, London. His PhD focussed on metabolic in Pseudomonas aeruginosa during infections of the cystic fibrosis lung. As a postdoctoral research associate he continued his work on P. aeruginosa metabolism and investigated the different ways bacteria react to changes in nutrient availability. In 2014, he became a Lecturer in Biomedical Science at the University of Roehampton, where he is currently programme lead for Biological Science and Zoology. His research focuses on bacteria of the ESKAPE group of opportunistic pathogens, and the role metabolism plays in their virulence and resistance.
Keywords: Mass spectrometry, bacterial metabolism, ESKAPE

Elizabete Carmo-Silva
Elizabete Carmo-Silva
Elizabete’s research focuses on the regulation of carbon assimilation by Rubisco in crop plants, especially wheat and cowpea. She received her undergraduate degree in applied plant biology and earned her PhD researching photosynthesis and photorespiration in C4 grasses at the University of Lisbon. She specialized on the regulation of Rubisco by Rubisco activase as a postdoctoral researcher with the USDA-ARS, then started exploring this knowledge for crop improvement as a research scientist at Rothamsted Research. She moved to Lancaster University in 2015 and her research group aims to understand and improve the efficiency of photosynthesis to optimise the sustainability and climate resilience of crop production.
Keywords: Metabolism, Photosynthesis, Enzymology, Molecular interactions, Protein Engineering, Synthetic Biology

Zoe Mann
Zoe Mann


Richard Porter
Richard Porter


Celia Quijano
Celia Quijano graduated from the Universidad de la República in Uruguay with a BSc in Biochemistry and MSc and PhD degrees in Chemistry, studying mitochondrial oxidants and antioxidants, with the supervision of Dr. Rafael Radi. She was a postdoctoral fellow at Dr. Toren Finkel’s lab at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in Bethesda, Maryland, USA, where she started working on mitochondrial metabolism in senescence. Currently she is an Associate Professor of Biochemistry at the School or Medicine and Principal Investigator of the Center for Biomedical Research (CEINBIO), at the Universidad de la República (UdelaR) in Uruguay. Her research focuses on mitochondrial metabolism and bioenergetics in cell senescence, and she coordinates an interdisciplinary group, that aims to improve the diagnosis of primary mitochondrial diseases. She is also responsible of the Facility for Metabolism and Bioenergetic studies of the CEINBIO, and is part of the government advisory board in Science, Technology and Innovation (CONICYT) in Uruguay.
Keywords: Mitochondria, bioenergetics, fatty acid metabolism, mitochondrial dynamics, cell senescence, mitochondrial diseases