Welcome to the lab, Negar Afshar & Rob Pickering!

Exciting developments as the first round of researchers have joined the lab! At the end of June, Negar Afshar joined us from Japan, where she carried out her PhD with Hiroshi Iwasaki, studying the mechanisms by which Rad51 interacts with regulators of homology-directed repair. Negar will apply her knowledge of DNA damage responses and biochemistry to become our resident biochemist, studying innate immune responses to DNA damage through in vitro reconstitution and cell biology. As the lab's Higher Scientific Officer, she will also help Christian with some of the managerial and organisation tasks.

Our first lab dinner! (Together with ICR friends Jörg Mansfeld and Karim Hussain)

Soon after, in early July, we were also joined by Rob Pickering, coming from Clare Bryant's lab in Cambridge, where he studied inflammasome-mediated innate immune signalling, following his PhD on mechanisms regulating inflammation in tissue-resident macrophages with Philip Taylor at Cardiff University. Rob joined as a RadNet-funded Postdoctoral Fellow, and will apply his background to innate immune responses in macrophages and macrophage precursors as part of a joint project between us, Pascal Meier, Jyoti Choudhary and Jon Pines.