People

Adele Marston

Group Leader

Adele did her PhD at the University of Oxford on cell division in Bacillus subtilis with Prof. Jeff Errington. After a postdoc at Harvard University with Dr. John Chant studying cell polarity in yeast, Adele joined Prof. Angelika Amon's lab at MIT, where she initiated her studies on meiosis. Adele moved to Edinburgh in November 2005 to start the lab and continue her work on chromosome segregation during meiosis.

Mansour Aboelenain

Wellcome Postdoc

Mansour graduated from the faculty of Veterinary Medicine. He completed his PhD in Hokkaido University, Japan in the Masashi Takahashi lab, studying the mechanisms related to improvement of oocyte and embryo development in cows. In 2018, he joined Karen Schindler's lab, Rutgers University, USA as a postdoc where he focused on understanding the genetic causes of aneuploidy using mouse oocytes as a model. He joined the lab in February 2023 to investigate causes of chromosome segregation errors using human and mouse oocytes.

Eleanor Casey

Wellcome iCM PhD student

Ellie did her BSc and MRes in Cell Biology at Durham University. She joined the lab in 2022 as a joint PhD student with Owen Davies to investigate crossover repression at the meiotic centromere through cell biology and biochemistry.

Alexander Julner Dunn

Wellcome Postdoc

Alexander did his PhD in the lab of Victoria Menendez Benito at Karolinska Institutet in Stockholm, Sweden, investigating mitotic spindle dynamics in budding yeast. He joined the Marston lab in July 2023 to work on tension sensing and signalling in mitosis.

Tiasha Ghosh

Darwin Trust PhD student

Tiasha did her BTech-MTech integrated degree in Biotechnology from National Institute of Technology Durgapur, India and joined the lab in October 2022. She is studying the regulation of the two meiotic divisions in budding yeast.

Marina Hamaia

EASTBIO PhD student

Marina completed her integrated Masters in Molecular and Cellular Biochemistry at the University of Oxford and joined the lab in October 2022 to start her PhD. She is investigating kinetochore assembly in meiosis in budding yeast.

Dilara Kocakaplan

Darwin Trust PhD student

Dilara did her BSc and MSc in Molecular Biology and Genetics at Koç University, Turkey. During her MSc in the lab of Ayse Koca Caydasi she worked on the Spindle Position Checkpoint in budding yeast. She joined the lab in October 2020 to investigate cohesin loading in meiosis.

Lori Koch

Wellcome Postdoc

Lori received her undergrad degree in Molecular Genetics from Ohio State University. She earned her PhD in Sue Biggins' lab at University of Washington, Seattle studying the regulation of kinetochore-microtubule attachments during mitosis. She joined the lab in October 2018 to investigate phosphoregulation of meiosis in budding yeast. 

Lucia Massari

Wellcome Postdoc

Lucia earned her MSc in Molecular Cell Biology at the University of Milan, Italy. She then did her PhD in Rosella Visintin’s lab at IEO, Milan, studying the effects of DNA intertwines on chromosome segregation in yeast. Lucia joined the lab in September 2019 to study chromosome segregation with synthetic minichromosomes.

Lucy Munro

Wellcome Research Assistant and PhD student

Lucy completed her BSc in Reproductive Biology and MScR in Reproductive Sciences at the University of Edinburgh. She carried out one of two MScR projects in the lab and returned in September 2022 as a PhD student to investigate mechanisms of chromosome segregation in mammalian oocyte meiosis.

Niamh O'Loughlin

Wellcome Research Assistant 

Niamh completed her BSc in Reproductive Biology at the University of Edinburgh. She joined the Marston lab in April 2024 to work on investigating the kinetochore in meiosis in frog oocytes as part of Gerard's Henry Wellcome-funded project.

Gerard Pieper

Sir Henry Wellcome Postdoctoral Fellow

Gerard did his PhD in the lab of Snezhka Oliferenko at King's College London and the Francis Crick Institute, working on chromatin-nuclear envelope attachments in fission yeast. He joined the lab in April 2020 to work on the kinetochore in frog and human meiosis.

Gemma Rowbotham 

MSc by Research Student

Hollie Rowlands

Wellcome Postdoc

Hollie completed her PhD in Joseph Yankulov’s lab at the University of Guelph, Canada studying the role of histone chaperones in regulation of the FLO genes. She then worked in George van der Merwe’s lab, creating novel yeast strains for use in ale production. In 2021, she joined the Marston lab to study the role of cohesin in double strand break repair.

Matthew Turner

Wellcome iCM PhD student

Matt did his undergrad degree in Physics and Biochemistry at the University of Sydney, Australia. He joined the lab in April 2024 to work on sister kinetochore monoorientation in meiosis and is co-supervised by Chris Brackley (School of Physics).

Aparna Vinod

Darwin Trust PhD student

Aparna got her BSc-MSc integrated degree in Biological Sciences from IISER Thiruvanathapuram, India and shortly after that joined the lab in October 2019. She is presently investigating the molecular players involved in monoorienting sister chromatids during meiosis I.