Lab Members
Heidi Welch - Group Leader
Heidi is originally from Germany. She did her undergraduate studies in Biology at the Free University of Berlin, and an MSc degree in Life Sciences at the Weizmann Institute in Israel, before moving to France to study for her PhD in neutrophil signalling. Heidi did two consecutive post docs at Babraham, working on targets of PI3K signalling, and has been a Group Leader at the Institute since 2003, working on Rac-GEFs.
Post docs
Yan Feng Dai
Yan Feng did his Life Sciences degree at the Agricultural University of Bejing before joining the Babraham Institute as a post doc in the field of oocyte maturation. Over the past six years, he has been working in signalling, mainly on the functions and regulation of the GAP1 enzyme family. He joined our laboratory in October 2008 to study the regulation of Rac.
PhD students
Campbell Lawson
Campbell did his undergraduate degree in Biochemistry at St Andrews University in Scotland and joined the laboratory in 2008 after winning a BBSRC PhD studentship to study the role of P-Rex in neutrophils.
Dingxin Pan
Dingxin did her undergraduate studies in Biochemistry at the University of York and a Masters degree in Integrated Immunology at the University of Oxford. She then worked as a Research Assistant at the Cambridge Centre for Brain Repair working on the Rac-GAP chimerin before joining our laboratory in 2009 as a PhD student on a Cambridge Overseas Trust studentship.
Past Group Members
Post docs
Claire Jackson
Claire did her BSc and postgraduate degrees at Rhodes University in South Africa. In the UK, Claire first worked as a Research Assistant and later as a post doc in Animal Behaviour. Claire worked at Babraham from 2007 to 2009 on the role of P-Rex in the cerebellum, which was a collaboration between the Welch and Bellamy laboratories. Claire now works as a researcher in a biotech company. Email: Claire.Jackson@Xention.com
Sarah Donald
Sarah obtained her PhD from the University of Leicester where she investigated the liver toxicity of anticancer drugs before joining our laboratory as a post doc in 2003. During her time at Babraham, Sarah discovered P-Rex2 and characterised its functional in the cerebellum. Sarah now holds a research position at Syntaxin Ltd. in Oxford.
Email: Sarah.Donald@Syntaxin.com
PhD students
Mark Barber
Mark is from New Zealand and did his undergraduate studies at Waikato University. Mark first joined us as a Research Assistant, working on the intracellular localisation of P-Rex, and then won a Cambridge Commonwealth Trust studentship to do his PhD on P-Rex interacting proteins. He is now back in New Zealand to set up a biotech company.
Email: mark.barber@cantab.net
Kirsti Hill
Kirsti did her undergraduate studies at Leicester University and was a PhD student in the Len Stephens /Phill Hawkins group, co-supervised by Heidi, to study the regulation of P-Rex GEF activity. After her PhD, Kirsti moved to Nottingham University, first as a post-doc and now as a lecturer. Email: Kirsti.Hill@nottingham.ac.uk
Research Assistants
Houdini Wu
Houdini, originally from Hong Kong, did his undergraduate training at Birmingham University. He worked in our laboratory as a Research Assistant from 2006 to 2007, before winning a PhD studentship from Queen Mary’s School of Biological and Chemical Sciences in London.
Email: h.t.wu@qmul.ac.uk
Undergraduates
There are few undergraduate students at Babraham. They are either visiting students or summer students. In our laboratory, we usually take one summer student per year. If you are interested, apply early!
Updated 24 August, 2011