The Conradt and Lambie Lab

Barbara Conradt (Group Leader)
Barbara studied in Germany and the US. She worked in Bill Wickner’s lab at UCLA where she obtained her PhD. She joined Bob Horvitz’s lab at MIT as a postdoc. She then started her independent research group at the Max Planck Institute of Neurobiology in Munich, Germany before she became a Professor of Genetics at Geisel School of Medicine at Dartmouth, Hanover, and then Professor of Cell and Developmental Biology at Ludwig-Maximilians University Munich, Germany. Afterward, she moved to the Research Department of Cell and Developmental Biology at University College London, UK, as a full professor and the head of the department.
b.conradt@ucl.ac.uk

Eric Lambie (Group Leader)

e.lambie@ucl.ac.uk

Madiha Ghani (Postdoc, 2021-present)
Madiha Ghani comes from Pakistan and obtained her PhD from Tsinghua University, Beijing in 2019, having previously served in the Health Biotechnology Division of Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission, Islamabad. Her research interests include understanding the interactions between cells and the molecular mechanisms/pathways governing the regulation of cell-to-cell signaling. Joining our lab as a post-doc, her goal is to investigate the mechanisms involving asymmetric division of mother cell and how the size of an unwanted cell activates the programmed cell death pathway during the development of C. elegans. Her hobbies include hiking, riding, badminton, and reading.
m.ghani@ucl.ac.uk

Jens Van Eeckhoven (Research Technician, 2022-present)
Jens studied Biology (BSc) and Evolutionary and Behavioural Biology (MSc) at the University of Antwerp in Belgium. There he studied sexual selection in guppies. He then went on to do his PhD at the University of Leeds, studying the reproductive biology of the red mason bee and the honey bee. He joined our lab at UCL at the start of 2022. He is currently studying how asymmetric mitochondrial inheritance affects cell fate in the Q cell lineage, specifically apoptosis. In his spare time, Jens enjoys bouldering, reading, chess, and a good cup of tea!
j.eeckhoven@ucl.ac.uk

Louisa McGuinness (Research Technician, 2021-present)
Louisa studied Molecular Biology (BSc Hons) at the University of Nottingham, after which she worked as a Brain Bank Technician at Imperial College London. This was her ‘I’ll get a year or so’s lab experience while I figure out what I want to do’ job. After sixteen years in that position (during which she learned a great deal about neurodegenerative disorders, histopathology, and the UK railway network), she moved to UCL to work as a Research Technician in a group using mouse models to study congenital heart disorders. She joined the Conradt-Lambie lab as a Research Technician in September 2021 and finds working with C. elegans much easier than working with mice.  She is currently focusing on developing CRISPR as a tool for use in the group’s research. Outside of work, she enjoys playing and running tabletop roleplaying games.
l.mcguinness@ucl.ac.uk

Aditya Sethi (PhD student, 2018-present)
Adi joined Barbara’s group as a PhD student in July 2018. He is studying asymmetric cell division and apoptotic cell death in a neuronal lineage in C. elegans. He is particularly involved in exploring mechanisms by which cells divide asymmetrically and how cell size is regulated by the conserved apoptotic pathway. He is also studying the dynamic gene expression of the pro-apoptotic gene egl-1 in asymmetrically dividing mother cells and their daughters – one of which undergoes apoptosis. Outside of the lab you can find him doing things other than lab work. He is 189 cm tall when standing, and much shorter when sitting down. He used to like playing basketball before he realized that he was not very good at it. He also enjoys graphic design and reading. He strongly believes that writing in the third person about oneself is quite difficult.
aditya.sethi@ucl.ac.uk

Yanwen Jiang (PhD student, 2018-present)
Yanwen studied Animal Sciences at Jilin University (China), where he also obtained his MSc in Reproductive Biology. He then joined our lab at LMU Munich, Germany for his PhD, and he moved to London with the team and transferred to UCL as a PhD student at the beginning of 2020. Yanwen´s project aims to identify the post-transcriptional trans-acting factors and cis-elements in the egl-1 3′ UTR that regulate egl-1 expression during the developmental apoptosis in C. elegans. In his free time, Yanwen likes playing badminton, cycling, and watching movies.
yanwen.jiang.19@ucl.ac.uk

Ioannis Segos (PhD student, 2019-present)
Ioannis had studied Environmental Sciences at the University of Siena (Italy) during his bachelor and next completed the master program on Nature Conservation and Management at the University of Florence (Italy). Afterwards, he undertook a second master program on Biology at LMU Munich (Germany). After that, he joined Conradt and Lambie Lab in 2020 for his PhD program in UCL (London), where he has been using C. elegans as experimental model. He is currently working on mitochondrial partitioning in an asymmetrically dividing neuroblast, which gives rise to two sibling cells; one of which is programmed to die. During his free-time, Ioannis likes hiking, cycling, and fishing.
ioannis.segos.19@ucl.ac.uk

Minjia Pan (Undergrad student, 2022-present)
Minjia is from China. She is a second-year undergrad student in Biomedical Sciences at UCL, with interests in Cell and Molecular Biology. She is doing her research training in our lab since June 2022, mentored by Yanwen.

minjia.pan.21@ucl.ac.uk