People

Meet our lab

Mattias Malaguti

Throughout his career, Mattias (he/him) has focused on developing and adapting novel technologies for use in mammalian biology models, aiming to address previously intractable biological questions.

Driven by an interest in how neighbouring cells influence each other's decisions, and frustrated by quantitative imaging limitations in growing embryos and organoid models, Mattias recently developed engineering biology tools to identify and isolate live interacting cells.

He was appointed Lecturer in Engineering Biology in the School of Biological Sciences in 2024, where his group leverages these innovative tools to investigate how healthy cells sense and respond to mutant neighbours in models of development and disease.

Personal profile - University of Edinburgh
Google Scholar Profile
ORCID record

Current lab members

Eva Gonzalez Suarez

Eva (she/her) began her academic journey when she came from Spain to England for a BSc in Biological Sciences (Biotechnology with Enterprise) at the University of Leeds, which included a placement year as a Research Affiliate at the University of Huddersfield. Here, her research focused on identifying biomarkers for neuropathic pain.

Eva then enrolled in the MSc in Biotechnology at the University of Edinburgh, and joined our lab for her dissertation project in May 2025.
During her project, Eva optimised culture conditions and transgenesis of immortalised skin cell lines.

Following her graduation, Eva re-joined the lab as a Research Assistant, and is now focusing on establishing synthetic neighbour-labelling technology in skin cell lines, and studying cell communication between different skin cell types.

Outside of the lab, Eva is keen on movies and enjoys experimenting in the kitchen (only edible goods!).

Mash Bandouil

Mash (they/them) is a PhD student in the EastBio Doctoral Tranining Partnership, hosted jointly with the laboratory of Prof Sara Brown.

Brown Lab - Skin Genetic Research

Hailing from Dallas, Mash obtained a BS in Biology and BA in Dance at Loyola University of Chicago. After graduation, they worked in the Carvill lab at Northwestern University, using cerebral organoids to study epilepsy. They then joined Tempus AI as a Research Associate, generating human tumour organoids for drug development.

In our lab, Mash is busy building a platform to streamline transgenesis of skin cell lines, establishing synthetic neighbour-labelling technologies in skin, and developing novel human skin organoids comprising different skin cell types.

Outside of the lab, Mash is a professional dancer who uses dance to make science more accessible. They created dance films that have been showcased at benefit concerts, science communication events, and the Dance your PhD competition.

Aisling Fairweather

Aisling (she/her) is a PhD student on a Martin Lee Doctoral Scholarship, who is hosted jointly with the laboratory of Prof Sally Lowell.

Sally Lowell research group

Aisling has developed a system to facilitate serial transgenesis of pluripotent stem cell lines, by creating two highly modular insulated genomic landing pads targeted to genomic safe harbour sites of a "master" cell line.

This line has allowed Aisling to develop silencing-resistant SyNPL synthetic neighbour-labelling pluripotent cell lines, which she is using to investigate how mutant cells affect their healthy neighbours in cell culture models of glioblastoma.

Sanendi Toy

Sanendi (he/him) joined the lab in early 2026 for his Biotechnology undergraduate research project.

During his project, he will attempt to establish the PUFFFIN synthetic neighbour-labelling system in skin cell lines, and test its efficacy.

Yana Slavova

Yana joined the lab in the summer of 2025 as a third-year Biochemistry undergraduate on a prestigious Gurdon/The Company of Biologists Summer Studentship.

During her project, she sought to optimise the PUFFFIN synthetic neighbour labelling system by making the PUFFFIN label easier to detect by immunofluorescence.

Yana developed a series of PUFFFIN fusion proteins containing different commonly used protein tags, and established clonal pluripotent cell lines harbouring these constructs. She then tested whether these tagged PUFFFIN proteins could be detected by immunofluorescence, and how the tags affected PUFFFIN's ability to label neighbouring cells.

Wenxi Sun

Wenxi joined the lab in the spring of 2025 as a Synthetic Biology and Biotechnology MSc student.

During her project, she designed and developed a new modular insulated genomic landing pad construct to target a human safe harbour locus, and optimised its delivery to immortalised human keratinocytes.

Peter Donlon

Peter joined the lab in early 2025 as a rotation student in the Wellcome Trust Integrative Cell Mechanisms PhD programme.

During his project, he tested the performance of SyNPL neighbour-labelling pluripotent cells across a range of differentiation assays.

Rory Brierton

Rory joined the lab in early 2025 for his Cell Biology undegraduate research project.

During his project, he optimised immunofluorescence staining protocols for human epidermal organoid sections, and tested a range of transfection conditions on cultured mammalian cells.

Alistair Rice

Alistair joined the lab in early 2025 for his Biotechnology undergraduate research project.

During his project, he developed new constructs to establish an immunostaining-friendly version of the PUFFFIN synthetic neighbour-labelling system. Alistair then delivered these constructs to mammalian cell lines and tested their efficacy.

This article was published on 2026-02-18