The group at our joint Christmas dinner with Daan Frenkel (December 2018).

Click here for more photos of the group

Rosana Collepardo

Group Leader

 

Associate Professor—Depts. of Genetics and Chemistry

Winton Advanced Research Fellow—Dept. of Physics

 

Rosana studied chemistry at the National Autonomous University of Mexico, and obtained an MSc and DPhil in Theoretical Chemistry at the University of Oxford under the supervision of Prof David Manolopoulos. She then did postdoctoral work at New York University as a Schlumberger Faculty for the Future Fellow with Prof Tamar Schlick, at the Institute for Biomedical Research-Barcelona Supercomputing Centre as a Marie Curie Fellow with Prof Modesto Orozco, and at the University of Cambridge joining the groups of Prof Daan Frenkel and David Wales. In 2016 she started her group as a Winton Advanced Research Fellow at the Cavendish Laboratory, and in 2019 obtained an ERC starting grant. Soon after, she moved to the Departments of Chemistry and Genetics as an Assistant Professor.

Rosana's main research interests lie in understanding the molecular mechanisms that determine the packaging of DNA insides cells, DNA structure, epigenetic phenomena, and the relationship between the structure of the genome and gene expression regulation. Her technical expertise is on molecular modelling, coarse-grained model development, atomistic simulations, and multiscale modelling.


Independent Research Fellows

Jorge R. Espinosa

Oppenheimer Research Fellow (2019-present) 

Roger Ekins Fellow at Emmanuel College (2019-present) 

Postdoctoral Research Associate (2018-2019)

Doctor in Physics, Complutense University of Madrid

Jorge works on liquid-liquid phase separation of protein mixtures

Jerelle A. Joseph

 

 

Junior Research Fellow at King's College (2020-present)

Postdoctoral Research Associate (2019-2020)

Doctor in Chemistry, University of Cambridge

Jerelle works on liquid-liquid phase separation of DNA/RNA-protein mixtures

Jan Huertas

 

 

Herchel Smith Fellow (2022-present)

Postdoctoral Research Associate (2021-2022)

Phd, Max Planck Institute for Molecular Biomedicine

Jan works on liquid-liquid phase separation of transcription factors and chromatin


Postdocs

Rob Welch

https://robwel.ch

 

Postdoctoral Research Associate (2021-present)

PhD in Physics,  University of Leeds

Rob works on nucleosome-resolution chromatin coarse-grained modelling and phase separation

Dr Stephen Farr

 

Postdoctoral Research Associate (2021-present)

EPSRC-funded PhD student of the CDT in Computational Methods for Materials Scholar (2017-2020)

MPhil in Scientific Computing (2016-2017)

Steve has now developed a high-resolution coarse-grained model of chromatin with near-chemical accuracy that is unique and very powerful....stay tuned! He also develops Molecular Dynamics, Monte Carlo, and Hybrid Monte Carlo simulation codes.


Graduate Students

Kieran Russell

PhD Student (2021-)

 

EPSRC-funded PhD student in Chemistry (2021-2024)

Co-supervised by Jerelle A. Joseph

 

 

Pin Yu Chew

PhD Student (2021-)

 

Winton and Oppenheimer-funded PhD student in Chemistry (2021-2024)

Co-supervised by Aleks Reinhardt

 

 

Ignacio Sanchez Burgos

PhD Student (2020-)

 

EPSRC-funded PhD student in Physics (2020-2023)

Co-supervised by Jorge R. Espinosa

 

 

Maria Julia Maristany

PhD Student (2020-)

 

Winton-funded PhD student in Physics (2020-2023)

Co-supervised by Jerelle A. Joseph

 

 

Esmae Woods

PhD Student (2019-)

 

EPSRC-funded PhD student in Physics (2019-2022)

Co-supervised by David Wales

 

Anne Aguirre

CDT Student (2019-)

 

ERC-funded student of the CDT (MPhil+PhD) in Computational Methods for Materials (2019-2023)

 

Charles Phillips

CDT Student (2019-)

 

ERC-funded student of the CDT (MPhil+PhD) in Computational Methods for Materials (2019-2023)

 


Undergraduate Students


Our collaborators

Previous collaborators


Past Members

Dr Adiran Garaizar

 

Currently: Postdoc at Bayer 

EPSRC and Winton-funded PhD student in Physics (2018-2022)

MPhil in Scientific Computing (2016-2017)

 

Dr Akshay Sridhar

 

Currently: Postdoc at Erik Lindahl's lab

Winton-funded PhD student in Physics (2017-2020)

MPhil in Scientific Computing (2016-2017)

Zahra Fahmi

 

Currently: Bioinformatics Scientist at Illumina

Postdoctoral Research Associate (2019-2021)

Doctor in Computational Biology, The Babraham Institute, University of Cambridge

 

Sophie Merchant

Visiting Summer Student (2019)

 

Part II Physics Student

Trinity College, University of Cambridge

 

Sivapalan Chelvaniththilan

MPhil in Physics (2016-2018)

Gates Scholar

Co-supervised by Prof. Daan Frenkel

 

Miguel García Ortegón

MPhil in Scientific Computing (2015-2016)

La Caixa Scholar

Co-supervised by Prof. Ulrich Keyser

Currently: PhD student in Data Science at Cambridge University