About us

Isabel Christie

ORCID: 0000-0003-0982-0331 Google Scholar

Isabel trained at UCL with Profs Mark Lythgoe, Jack Wells and Alexander Gourine. After an award winning MRC capacity building PhD in the Department of Medical Physics and Biomedical Engineering, Isabel remained at UCL to undertake a 7 year postdoctoral contract at the Centre for Cardiovascular and Metabolic Neuroscience. Her early work focused on how astrocytes regulate oxygen homeostasis in the brain. Her future work focuses on translational imaging methods. She hopes to quantify when oxygen insufficiency occurs in middle age and ask why and if this becomes problematic for cognition. She will undertake this work using facilities at The University of Sheffield, in collaboration with Profs Jim Wild and Sheila Francis in the division of Clinical Medicine, School of Medicine and Population Health. Her current grant is described in more detail on the Wellcome Trust webpage.

Valentina Mosienko

ORCID: 0000-0002-8562-532X Google Scholar

Valentina trained in Germany with Prof Michael Bader and Dr Natalia Alenina where she published several prominent papers during her PhD delving into the role of serotonin in stress response at molecular, cellular and behavioural levels. Next, she moved to the UK to work with Prof Sergey Kasparov and Dr Anja Teschemasher at the University of Bristol. Sergey was one of the early developers of viral tools to target astrocytes with optogenetic approaches and to suggest GPCR-mediated mechanisms of lactate on neurons. In Bristol, Valentina worked on identifying novel lactate receptors in the brain. Valentina joined the University of Exeter Medical School as a Lecturer before accepting the position at the University of Bristol where she is currently a Senior Research Fellow and Proleptic Senior Lecturer. Her current work is focussed on non-neuronal mechanisms underlying depression through astrocytes and microglia and is supported by the MRC and AMS. 

Philip Hasel

ORCID: 0000-0003-4378-3685 Google Scholar

Philip received his PhD from Edinburgh University after working in Prof. Giles Hardingham’s lab. He then worked as a postdoc at NYU in Prof. Shane Liddelow’s lab. Applying integrative single cell RNA-seq and spatial transcriptomics he recently discovered that astrocytes fall into discrete subtypes that occupy distinct spaces in the brain, and that each subtype undergoes a subtype-specific reactive transformation during brain inflammation. In 2024, Philip returned to Edinburgh as an independent group leader at the Dementia Research Institute. He holds a Wellcome Trust Career Development award to study the role of astrocyte heterogeneity in neurodegeneration. He is particularly interested in astrocytes that occupy the borders of the brain, called glia limitans astrocytes, how they keep the brain healthy and what goes wrong in acute and chronic neurodegeneration.  His current grant is described in more detail on the Wellcome Trust webpage. 

Mootaz Salman

ORCID: 0000-0002-5683-1706 Google Scholar

Mootaz trained in Sheffield investigating the mechanisms of brain water transport where he discovered a novel pharmacological framework for developing drugs to treat traumatic brain injuries and stroke through targeting the water channel (aquaporin-4) in astrocytes. Next he undertook a postdoctoral fellowship at Harvard Medical School and Boston Children’s Hospital. During this time, he developed 3D in vitro models to investigate mechanisms involved in improving the effectiveness of therapeutic antibodies for Alzheimer’s disease in collaboration with Biogen. He is a Group Leader in Cellular Neuroscience, MRC Career Development Fellow and Research Fellow at Wolfson College, Oxford. His work involves investigating mechanisms of blood-brain barrier (dys)function in traumatic CNS injuries and neurodegenerative diseases using patient-derived stem cells, gene editing (CRISPR-Cas 9), advanced imaging and organ-on-a-chip technologies. He also receives funding from the BBSRC and Horizon2020. Mootaz has recently won a string of awards including the International Society of Neurochemistry (ISN) and APSN Young Neuroscientist Lectureship Award in 2022, The Society for Experimental Biology (SEB) 2024 President’s Medal for the Cell Biology Section and is named the Alzheimer’s Research UK David Hague Early Career Investigator of the Year in 2024 and recipient of the inaugural ALBA-Roche Research Prize for Excellence in Neuroscience 2024.

Clare Howarth

ORCID: 0000-0002-6660-9770 Google Scholar

Clare trained with David Attwell at UCL. After her initial MSci in Physics, she pivoted towards brain blood flow and in 2006 was co-author of a major breakthrough in the field, when the role of pericytes in capillary diameter regulation was first described. Following her PhD, she secured a Wellcome Trust Sir Henry Wellcome fellowship to work with Brian MacVicar at University of British Columbia and Nicola Sibson at Oxford University, where she was also a Junior Research Fellow at Somerville College. Using a variety of optical imaging approaches, they demonstrated a  novel role for astrocytes in the regulation of vasodilation to CO2. In 2013, Clare moved to Sheffield to establish a 2-photon neurovascular lab. Working closely with Jason Berwick, the group uses a multimodal approach to interrogate the relationship between neuronal activity and evoked blood flow changes, and how that relationship alters in conditions such as Alzheimer’s disease. Having completed a Sir Henry Dale Wellcome Fellowship, Clare is now a Senior Lecturer. 

Lucy Wheatley

ORCID: 0000-0001-9911-0872 Google Scholar

Lucy gained her PhD from a collaboration between Tatjana Sauka- Spengler and Roger Patient, at the University of Oxford, using genomics to characterise spatio-temporal differences in the divergence of blood and vascular lineages. On a travelling fellowship Lucy collaborated with Scott Fraser’s Translational Imaging Centre team at the University of Southern California to visualise these lineage divisions in live zebrafish embryos, and identified key cellular and genetic interactions needed for correct formation of the vertebral circulatory system. In 2017 she undertook postdoctoral research focusing on the influence of the non-coding genome on transcriptional mechanisms at the University of Birmingham, UK, and showed how repetitive DNA elements can shape genome topology and dramatically influence global expression patterns. In 2023 Lucy moved to the University of Edinburgh to join the Czopka group as a postdoc investigating the molecular and genetic mechanisms used by neurons and glia to regulate neural circuitry.

Talitha Kerrigan

ORCID: 0000-0003-2158-567X

Talitha trained in Leeds with Dr Hugh Pearson and Prof Chris Peers, investigating the physiological role of amyloid beta protein in modulating voltage-gated potassium channel function. Talitha began her postdoctoral research at the University of Bristol, where she investigated the mechanisms underlying stress and its impact on the development of Alzheimer’s disease under the supervision of Prof. Kei Cho. She later moved to the University of Exeter to further explore intrinsic mechanisms of excitability at the single-cell level with Prof. Andrew Randall. Now a Senior Lecturer at Exeter, Talitha is an applied neurophysiologist with a strong focus on stem cell biology, particularly the use of induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) as models for neurodegenerative diseases. Her research concentrates on the role of neuroglia and neuroinflammation in conditions such as Alzheimer’s disease. She is particularly interested in neuron-microglia interactions during neuronal network oscillations, the functional characterization of iPSC-derived neural cells from individuals with a high genetic risk for Alzheimer’s, and the dynamic influence of astrocyte-secreted APOE4 in disease progression.

Stavros Vagionitis

ORCID: 0000-0002-9501-0695 Google Scholar

Stavros received his PhD after working with Tim Czopka at the Technical University of Munich (now University of Edinburgh), where he studied axon-oligodendrocyte interactions during developmental myelination in zebrafish. He then move to Cambridge to join the lab of Prof. Ragnhildur Thóra Káradóttir at the Cambridge Centre for Myelin Repair and the Stem Cell Institute. There, Stavros is studying myelin plasticity and remyelination in mice and rats. Stavros is one of our ECR members, he created our logo and manages our website. Often, he will be the one replying to communications received on our email address.