I completed my MChem at the University of York in Chemistry, Medicinal and Biological Chemistry, with a year in industry, where I worked at UCB Pharma, in the Medicinal Chemistry department. My Masters project was on a drug discovery project in peptide therapeutics. After this, I completed a 10-week internship in organic chemistry at AstraZeneca. I then worked as a Junior Medicinal Chemist for a year, at Autifony Therapeutics, working in CNS drug discovery. For my PhD, an MRC iCASE-funded project, I aim to develop small molecules targeting the telomeric Shelterin complex, jointly in Sebastian Guettler's and Swen Hoelder's groups at the ICR, with Merck as our industry partner.

I completed my BSc degree at the University of West Indies (UWI), in Kingston Jamaica. I then pursued an MSc degree at the University College London (UCL), where I characterised a novel cause of Silver-Russell Syndrome in the lab of Professor Gudrun Moore. Subsequently, I ventured off to Zürich, where I joined the lab of Professor Ulrike Kutay at the Institute of Biochemistry, ETH Zürich, as a PhD student. My PhD research identified mammalian inner nuclear membrane proteins that majorly contribute to the establishment and the maintenance of 3D genome architecture, and the resulting biological consequences when this organisation is perturbed. I joined the Guettler Lab as a Postdoc in October 2025, and my work involves investigating the molecular mechanisms of tankyrase, particularly in Wnt/β-catenin signalling and telomere length homeostasis.

Ollie joined the ICR in October 2025 as a Postdoctoral Training Fellow. He completed his MChem with a Year in Industry at Cardiff University, spending his placement year at Syngenta as a synthetic chemist. In June 2025, he completed his PhD in chemistry at Imperial College London under the supervision of Prof. James Bull, where his research centred around developing new synthetic transformations to access medicinally relevant motifs, including enantioenriched sulfoximines as well as novel 3,3-disubstituted oxetane and azetidine scaffolds. Following this, he held a post as a Research Associate in synthetic medicinal chemistry and drug discovery supervision with Prof. Ed Tate at Imperial College London. At the ICR, his work involves the design and synthesis of small molecules for targeted protein degradation.

Dr Vasundara Srinivasan obtained her PhD in Biochemistry from the University of Georgia, USA in the lab of Prof B.C. Wang. She next joined the lab of the Nobel Laureate Prof Hartmut Michel at the Max Planck Institute of Biophysics, Germany to work on membrane proteins, G-protein coupled receptors (GPCR) and transporters, focussing on mitochondrial ABC transporters in collaboration with Prof Roland Lill. As a project leader at the VIB, Brussels, Belgium, she used nanobodies as chaperones for the crystallisation of GPCRs. She headed the crystallisation facility at the University of Marburg before joining the lab of Prof Christian Betzel at DESY, Hamburg to work on the structure-based drug discovery of proteases involved in the replication cycle of SARS-CoV-2. She joined the lab of Prof Sebastian Guettler at the ICR in January 2025.

Deepa Bajantri is the Scientific Officer in Professor Kristian Helin’s lab since September 2025. Deepa obtained her BSc degree from Karnatak University, Dharwad, India, majoring in Chemistry, Botany and Biotechnology. Driven by concepts of Molecular biology and Genetic engineering, she obtained an MSc degree in Biotechnology and earned a distinguished Gold Medal from Karnatak University, India. After briefly training on how EVs mediate AML Progression and Survival at St John’s Research Institute (SJRI), Bangalore, Deepa joined as Research Project Associate I at Prof Sarin’s lab, The Institute of Stem Cell Science and Regenerative Medicine (InStem), Bangalore, India. Her research focused on ‘Nucleolar localisation of Notch 4 intracellular domain and how that diversifies signalling outcomes activated by the receptor’. She further pursued her research studies at Queen Mary University of London (QMUL) and The Francis Crick Institute, UK. The project focused on ‘Unravelling the mechanism of NF-κB signalling mediated by its regulatory protein N4BP1 and the ubiquitin system in atomic detail’ using NMR Spectroscopy. Hobbies: Alongside research, Deepa gets personal satisfaction from being a communications strategist, deconstructing complex issues with a commanding record of over 100 competitive debate wins.

Dr Ben Jones is a postdoctoral research fellow working with Gurdip Bhalay in the Medicinal Chemistry 1 group. He received his MChem with Industrial Training from Heriot-Watt University, which included a year-long placement at Roche in Basel, and a summer placement at Genentech in San Francisco, both in medicinal chemistry. Ben completed his PhD at the University of Bristol under Professor John Bower, focusing on the development of aza-Heck reactions and their application in total synthesis. He then undertook a postdoctoral position at the University of Vienna with Professor Nuno Maulide, working on inverse hydride shuttle chemistry and total synthesis. Before joining the ICR, he gained industrial experience in Process Chemistry at Sai Life Sciences UK.

Soumak joined the Generations Study team in 2025 under the mentorship of Professor Garcia-Closas. He holds a bachelor’s degree in information technology and a postgraduate diploma in Business Analytics. Prior to joining the team, Soumak gained extensive data-focused experience at leading IT consulting and technology firms, where he developed expertise in SQL, Python, Google Cloud platform, Hadoop, Spark, and ETL best practices. At the Generations Study, Soumak is responsible for data management, governance, and transformation, with a focus on optimizing participant-facing interfaces in line with FAIR principles.

I provide histopathological support and analysis for MRI biomarker validation.

Sabine is a PhD student with an MSc in Medical Statistics. Prior to joining the ICR, she worked as a trial statistician, gaining valuable experience in clinical research. Her academic background is further enhanced by additional training in precision oncology and cancer genomics at Harvard Medical School. Sabine’s research interests focus on early-phase adaptive platform trials in precision oncology.

Being graduated in Statistics in UK and China, Yu (Maggie) began her career as a SAS programmer at Pfizer, then worked as a trial statistician at OCTRU (University of Oxford). She joined the ICR as a Trials Methodologist in 2025, focusing on early-phase trials and adaptive designs, and methodology improvement work.