Wellcome Trust CDA Fellow and group leader
Bio: After studying Natural Sciences at Queens’ College, Cambridge, Matthew obtained his PhD at the Francis Crick Institute in Sir Paul Nurse’s lab in 2016. In 2017 he moved to Stanford as a postdoc with Prof. Jan Skotheim and established his own group in Edinburgh in 2023.
Wellcome Trust postdoc
Bio: Carol completed her PhD on ribosome biogenesis in cancer in the Gentilella lab (University of Barcelona). She joined the lab in April 2025 and is interested in understanding how protein synthesis changes as cells enlarge, in both yeast and mammalian cell lines.
EastBio PhD student
Bio: Adriana moved to Edinburgh and joined the lab for her MRes and now PhD research after her bachelor’s degree at the University of Stirling. Adriana is investigating how cellular signalling pathways respond to changes in cell size as cells grow oversized.
Wellcome Trust Research Assistant
Bio: Aakansha joined the lab in October 2025 as a Research Assistant, having completed her BSc at Durham and then MSc at UCL. Aakansha is interested in how gene expression changes with cell size in mammalian cells and how size-dependent changes contribute to disease, especially cancer.
EpiCrossBorders PhD student
Bio: Luisa started her PhD in 2023 having completed her Masters at the University of Tuebingen. Luisa work delves into how the proteome changes with growth conditions and splits her time between both the Schmoller lab, at the Helmholtz München, and the Swaffer lab.
Darwin Trust PhD student
Bio: Simon joined the lab in 2024 following his Master’s in Quantitative & Systems Biology from the University of Zurich. His project combines wet-lab and computational work to study how the activity of different transcription factors is altered in response to cellular growth.
Wellcome iCM PhD student
Bio: Yuyang joined the group in March 2024 as a Wellcome iCM student, having graduated from Zhejiang University in Integrated Biomedical Sciences. Yuyang is interested in understanding how key regulators of mRNA decay alter their activity when cell size or transcription are altered.
Wellcome iCM PhD student
Bio: After his Master’s in Biochemistry at the University of Cambridge, Huy joined the lab in March 2025 via the Wellcome iCM program. Huy’s work is focused on understanding how the RBPs alter their activity as cells vary their size and growth rate.
Darwin Trust PhD student
Bio: Srini started his PhD in the lab in 2023, having completed his Msc by Research at University College London on the Biology of Ageing. His PhD project is focused on investigating the mechanisms by which core biosynthetic processes change with cell size.
Past members:
Ryan Gordon – Wellcome Trust iCM Summer Studentship, 2025 (University of Stirling)
Hans Liu – MSci Student, 2025 (Bioinfomatics, University of Edinburgh)
Lovro Jeric – Laboratory Technician, 2025
Rachel Wrench – Wellcome Trust iCM Summer Studentship, 2024 (University of Cambridge)
Maya Hua – MSci Student, 2024 (Bioinfomatics, University of Edinburgh)
Mariam Abdullah – MSci Student, 2023-2024 (Genetics, University of Glasgow)
Swaffer lab 