The Team

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Professor Jesmond Dalli

Jesmond Dalli is Professor of Molecular Pharmacology at the Barts and The London School of Medicine and Dentistry and Queen Mary University of London. He is also a Sir Henry Dale Fellow and Director of the Lipid Mediator Unit at the William Harvey Research Institute. He received a BSc (Hons) in chemistry and biology and an MSc in biology from the University of Malta. He then read for and completed a PhD at the William Harvey Research Institute, Queen Mary University of London with Prof Mauro Perretti. Prof Dalli subsequently moved to Prof Charles N. Serhan’s laboratory at Harvard Medical school and the Brigham and Women’s Hospital where he held a faculty post and was the co-director of two NIH funded lipid mediator profiling cores.

kim

Kim Pistorius is a research technician in the Lipid Mediator Unit with Prof Jesmond Dalli. She is also reading for a PhD investigating the role of MCTR’s in tissue repair and regeneration. She obtained her BSc (Hons) and MSc in Biological Science at the University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban, South Africa. In this time she was researching the effect of hypoxia in the South African abalone, focusing on the expression of the oxygen moderating protein hypoxia-inducible factor-1 (HIF-1) and its target gene, inducible nitric oxide synthase (iNOS).

 

9863602_orig Roberta De Matteis obtained a Bachelor of Science in Medical Biotechnology and subsequently a Master of Science in Medical Biotechnology and Molecular Medicine from the University of Milan. She then proceeded to work in the Immuno-Rheumatology lab under the supervision of Professor P. L. Meroni at the University of Milan – Istituto Auxologico Italiano with a Junior Researcher’s Fellowship. She worked as a Research Technician in Prof Jesmond Dalli’s lab at the William Harvey Research Institute, Queen Mary University of London before beginning a PhD studentship in September 2018.

Duco pic
Dr Duco Koenis

Dr Duco Koenis is a Postdoctoral Research Assistant at the Lipid Mediator Unit of the William Harvey Research Institute. He obtained his Bachelor of Science degree in Biomedical Sciences at the University of Amsterdam in 2010, and a Master of Science degree in Biomedical Sciences with a focus on Medical Biochemistry at the University of Amsterdam in 2013, graduating with distinction (cum laude). Following his Master’s studies, Duco started his PhD research at the Medical Biochemistry department of the Academic Medical Center in Amsterdam under the supervision of Prof Dr. C.J.M. de Vries, where he studied the role of the nuclear receptor Nur77 in macrophage metabolism and inflammation. Duco started his current work with Prof Jesmond Dalli’s group in July 2018.

 

Esteban

Esteban Gomez Cifuentes is a bioinformatician at the Lipid Mediator Unit of the William Harvey Research Institute. He obtained a Bachelor Degree (2013) in Biological Engineering from Universidad Nacional de Colombia and then he pursued his Master Degree (2018) in Bioinformatics at Queen Mary University of London. During his professional life, he has worked in different research areas (immunology, drug development, genomics and evolution) always trying to create bioinformatics solutions to biological problems (database and algorithm development, big genomic data manipulation and statistical analysis). He started working in the Lipid Mediator Unit as a Research Technician to develop computational models, based on machine learning, capable of predicting the response of patients with inflammatory diseases to several treatments. Currently he is a PhD student identifying relevant biomarkers related to inflammatory diseases using bioinformatic tools. 

 
Dr Maria Gonzalez Nunez

Dr Maria Gonzalez Nunez is a postdoctoral Research fellow working at the William Harvey Research Institute of the Queen Mary University of London since 2015. She was a Marie Sklodowska-Curie Intra-European fellow until July 2019 working with Dr Ezra Aksoy on the ‘Role of the p110δ PI3K signalling in NOD2-mediated gastrointestinal immunity and inflammation’. She received her BSc (Hons) in Biology (Specialized in Biomedicine) in 2004 from the University of Vigo (Spain) and B.Sc in Biochemistry in 2006 from the University of Salamanca (Spain). She completed her Master’s Degree in Pathophysiology in 2007 and worked as a Research Assistant at the Department of Physiology and Pharmacology, University of Salamanca. In 2009, she was awarded a PhD Government Spanish Fellowship and completed her Ph.D in Biochemistry in the same department in 2013 investigating the ‘Role of the ALK-1 receptor in the maintenance of the cardiovascular homeostasis’ under the supervision of Prof. Jose Miguel Lopez Novoa. During this time, she did a 6-month stay at the Department of Physiology and Functional Genomics in the University of Florida (United States) where she collaborated in the project aimed at ‘Unravelling the role of the TGF-β type III receptor Endoglin in the gut epithelium and its involvement in gut inflammation’ under the supervision of Prof. S. Paul Oh as part of her research study. 

 

 

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