Brief Bio: I am an MRC-CDA Fellow and Group Leader in the Department of Pharmacology, University of Cambridge. My research interest is in studying the molecular processes underlying protein self-assembly. My group is exploring novel therapeutic strategies for neurodegenerative diseases. We are using biophysics, cell biology and protein engineering, to create engineered biomolecular condensates as a targeted protein degradation platform to facilitate the removal of aggregates from the cell.

Condensate related research interests: neurodegenerative diseases, biomolecular condensates, amyloid fibrils, consensus tetratricopeptide repeat proteins, protein self-assembly, protein homeostasis

Tools: protein engineering, fluorescence microscopy, spectroscopic techniques (CD, fluorescence), cell models

Contact: https://www.phar.cam.ac.uk/research/kumita, jrk38[at]cam.ac.uk

Brief Bio: Mark is an Associate Professor in the Department of Chemistry at Durham. He works on computer simulations of soft matter, including biological and colloidal systems. He is interested in the development of simulation methodology as well as its application.

Condensate related research interests: Multivalent (bio)polymers, selective binding and superselectivity, heterogeneous nucleation, membrane-condensate interactions.

Tools: Molecular dynamics and Monte Carlo simulation, coarse-grained modelling, statistical thermodynamics

Equipment: High performance computing

Contact: m.a.miller@durham.ac.uk

Brief Bio: Halim holds the Jason Reese Chair of Multiscale Fluid Mechanics at the School of Engineering, University of Edinburgh. He leads an interdisciplinary modelling group working in the areas of fluid dynamics, soft matter, and biophysics.

Condensate related research interests: Wetting of biomolecular condensates on lipid membranes and cytoskeletal filaments; Material properties of condensates (e.g., surface tension, viscoelasticity); Formation of biomolecular condensates.

Tools: Continuum mechanics, coarse-grained simulations, fluctuation analysis, computational fluid dynamics.

Equipment:High Performance Computing; In-house computational softwares.

Contact: https://sites.google.com/site/kusumaatmaja/

Brief Bio: Dr Janin Lautenschläger completed her PhD at the Friedrich-Schiller-University Jena, Germany. She then moved to Cambridge in 2015 for her postdoctoral work. In 2020, she received a Royal Society Dorothy Hodgkin Research Fellowship, and started her group at the Cambridge Institute for Medical Research. Her work focuses on how membrane-less organelles are formed and regulated at the pre-synapse.

Condensate related research interests: Synapse, Pre-synapse, alpha-synuclein, lipid membranes, lamprey giant synapse model, I3 Neurons

Tools: lamprey giant synapse model, I3 Neurons

Contact: https://www.lautenschlager-lab.com

Brief Bio: Stefano is a theoretician working on the physical and mathematical modelling of condensates. He focuses on noise (e.g. single-molecule dynamics, fluctuations, etc.), non-equilibrium, dissipation, and the physical properties of condensates (viscosity, diffusion coefficients, interface resistance) which he studies with the tool of non-equilibrium statistical mechanics.

Condensate related research interests: Single-molecule dynamics, Noise, Fluctuations, Transcriptional condensates, Dissipation

Tools: Modelling, stochastic processes, statistical physics, stochastic thermodynamics

Equipment: Pen and paper, computer simulations

Contact: stefano.bo@kcl.ac.uk, https://stefano.bo/

Brief Bio: I have an MSc in Genetics and PhD in Biochemistry, and I did my postdoctoral training at Cardiff. My research focuses on the dysfunction of biomolecular condensates in neurodegenerative diseases. I was previously funded by fellowships from Medical Research Foundation and MND Association. I worked in a drug discovery unit for 3 years. Since 2021, I am based in SITraN, University of Sheffield, supported by a UKRI Future Leaders Fellowship. We are funded by URKI grants and various charities.

Condensate related research interests: paraspeckles, stress granules, nuclear bodies, RNA metabolism, lncRNA, RNA condensation, splicing, stress response, cell biology, neurodegeneration, ALS.

Tools: cellular models, neuronal models, RNA detection (smFISH etc), super-resolution imaging, optogenetics, in vitro reconstitution of condensates, confocal nanoscanning, CRISPR models, patient-derived models, high-content screening, compound libraries

Equipment: Neuronal cell models, Opera Phenix and Operetta HCS, compound libraries

Contact: https://www.ts-lab.co.uk/

Brief Bio: Luke is a theoretical physicist working in the area of statistical physics, stochastic systems, soft matter, and biophysics. He is a Flora Philip Research Fellow at The School of Mathematics, University of Edinburgh. In addition to his current Fellowship, Luke has been awarded  an Isaac Newton Institute Fellowship, University of Cambridge, and a Wellcome Accelerator Award.

Condensate related research interests: modelling of intrinsically disordered proteins, condensation and aggregation of Tau, optimal control of condensates, characterizing non-equilibrium properties of condensates, and mechanical response of condensates.

Tools: coarse-grained molecular dynamics, statistical mechanics, polymer physics, and optimal control theory.

Equipment: Pen and paper, High Performance Computing.

Contact: www.drlukekdavis.com, luke.davis@ed.ac.uk

Brief Bio: Lorenzo is a Professor of Bionanoscience in the Department of Chemical Engineering and Biotechnology at the University of Cambridge.

(URF) in the Department of Chemical Engineering and Biotechnology, University of Cambridge. He studied physics at the University of L’Aquila (Italy) prior to completing his PhD at the Cavendish Laboratory (Cambridge). He held an Oppenheimer Fellowship (2015), a Leverhulme Fellowship (2015) and the URF (2018) at the Cavendish, before moving to Imperial College London, Department of Chemistry, to work as Lecturer (2019) and Senior Lecturer (2021). He has been awarded an ERC StG in 2019.

Tools: DNA nanotechnology, RNA nanotechnology, microscopy, image segmentation, microrheology

Equipment: Light microscopes, spectrophotometers, fluorimeters, thermocyclers, pipetting robots and other standard biochemical lab kit

Contact: ld389@cam.ac.uk

Brief Bio: My group, entitled ‘University in Biology’, uses tools of statistical mechanics, soft condensed matter physics, applied mathematics, and computation methods to study diverse classes of universal behaviour in biological systems. Our research also aims to expand the horizons of both biology and physics by studying biological problems that require the development of novel physics.

Condensate related research interests: Nonequilibrium phase separation, coarsening kinetics, wetting, P granules, synaptonemal complex, amyloids, condensate rheology

Tools: Theoretical biophysics, hydrodynamics, statistical physics, biophysical modelling, simulation

Contact: https://clee.bg-research.cc.ic.ac.uk/index.html, c.lee@imperial.ac.uk

Brief Bio: Mark Leake addresses biophysical/biochemical questions in a range of biological processes. His biophysics PhD (KCL) on muscle proteins developed optical tweezers, with postdocs in Oxford and Heidelberg and a Royal Society URF championing single-molecule biophysics, prior to becoming Chair of Biological Physics at the University of York in 2013. He is Founder of the York’s Biological Physical Sciences Institute, Coordinator of its Physics of Life Group, and Chair of the UK Physics of Life network

Condensate related research interests: Liquid-liquid phase separation, aggresome, bacteria, physical princles, cell stress, antimicrobial resistance, recombinant therapeutics, synthetic condensates

Tools: single-molecule biophysics, super-resolution microscopy, optical tweezers, magnetic tweezers, AFM

Equipment: single-molecule biophysics, super-resolution microscopy, optical tweezers, magnetic tweezers,

Contact: mark.leake@york.ac.uk; https://york-biophysics.github.io/

Brief Bio: Rebecca Beveridge is a Senior Lecturer and UKRI Future Leaders Fellow who joined the University of Strathclyde in June 2020. She obtained a BSc in biochemistry and chemistry from the University of Leeds in 2011 and completed her PhD at the University of Manchester in 2015. Rebecca spent 4 years at the Institute for Molecular Pathology in Vienna, Austria as a postdoctoral researcher/ Lise Meitner Postdoctoral Fellow.

Condensate related research interests: We investigate conformational changes of phase separating proteins in different solution conditions, in sub-saturating concentrations at which the proteins remain fully soluble.

Tools: native mass spectrometry, ion mobility mass spectrometry

Equipment: Waters Synapt Ion Mobility Mass Spectrometers

Contact: www.beveridgeresearch.co.uk rebecca.beveridge@strath.ac.uk

Brief Bio: Chris is Professor of Cancer Biophysics in the School of Medicine and Population Health. Over the past decade, the lab has developed specialisation in the application of fluorescence and mechanical measurements from whole cells to single molecules. We are a multidisciplinary lab drawing upon core techniques in Cell Biology, Biochemistry, Biophysics, Mechanobiology, Super Resolution imaging and Genomics.

Condensate related research interests: Transcription regulation, Cancer-related fusion proteins, estrogen receptor proteins.

Tools: STORM, SIM, AFM, Protein purification, Spectroscopy

Equipment:High resolution fluorescence microscopy (inquire for availability), Atomic Force microscopy (inquire for availability)

Contact: c.toseland@sheffield.ac.uk

Brief Bio: My group has >25 years’ experience in protein folding and engineering, focusing recently on tandem repeat proteins. We are exploiting the modularity and designability of the repeat-protein architecture to build a biotherapeutics platform against hard-to-drug targets. We are also interested in exploiting naturally occurring phase-separating proteins that function in the cell's quality control machineries in order to develop biotherapeutics for 'Condensate-enhanced Targeted Protein Degradation'.

Condensate related research interests: protein design, protein engineering, targeted protein degradation

Tools: protein engineering, protein-protein interaction techniques, microscopy, optical tweezers

Equipment: ITC, BLI, mass photometry, optical tweezers

Contact: lsi10@cam.ac.uk

Brief Bio: Dan began his career as a structural biologist at Imperial College London, using cryoEM to look at bacterial RNA polymerase complexes and chromatin remodelers. He then moved to the UPenn in Philadelphia, using biochemistry and genomics to demonstrate a new functional role for enhancer RNAs, a type of noncoding RNA, in transcription regulation. Dan started his own at the University of Sheffield in 2017, and was awarded a Sir Henry Dale Fellowship in 2019 to continue his work on eRNA function.

Condensate related research interests: Transcriptional condensates, Enhancers, Gene regulation, lncRNA, Enzyme activity, IDR conformational dynamics

Tools: Molecular biology, functional genomics, gene editing, protein engineering, single molecule biophysics, cryoEM, biochemistry, live cell imaging

Equipment: Protein purification, molecular biology, basic biophysics. I Work with core facilities and collaborators at UoS.

Contact: www.bose-lab.org

Brief Bio: Alex Borodavka is an Assistant Professor of Biotechnology at the University of Cambridge, studying RNA biochemistry and virology, with a focus on viral RNA genomes and packaging. He completed his PhD at the University of Leeds using single-molecule fluorescence. Awarded a Wellcome Trust Sir Henry Wellcome Fellowship, he continued his research at LMU and the Max Planck Institute in Munich, before returning to Cambridge on a Sir Henry Dale Fellowship.

Condensate related research interests: Viral replicative condensates, virus assembly and role of condensates, RNA-binding proteins and RNA structure in condensates.

Tools: RNA biochemistry, single-molecule biophysics, microscopy, molecular virology, RNA structure modelling

Equipment: Microscopy (inquire for availability)

Contact: https://www.borodavkalab.org/

Brief Bio: We use theory and simulations based in statistical mechanics to model fluid phase behaviour and adsorption. Regarding biological condensates, I'm mainly interested in the underlying physics of the formation of these aggregates. Especially, how appropriate is the model based on liquid-liquid phase separation compared to models based on cluster formation, i.e. micelle-like models.

Condensate related research interests: Liquid-liquid phase separation, Short-range attraction, long-range repulsion (SALR), Micelle-like models, Equilibrium phase behaviour of condensates, Formation pathways of condensates, Primary vs secondary nucleation

Tools: Molecular simulation, Monte Carlo simulation, molecular dynamics, density functional theory, integral equations

Equipment: local workstations and clusters

Contact: martin.sweatman@ed.ac.uk

Brief Bio: Cyril is Professor of Structural biology at the Leicester Institute of Structural and chemical biology. He studied biochemistry in Marseille, France, obtaned his PhD from Utrecht University, the Netherlands and did a postdoc at the ETH Zurich, Switzerland.

Condensate related research interests: NMR and biophysical investigation of RNA binding proteins and protein-RNA interactions, with a focus on intrinsically disordered regions, that have a strong tendency to form condensates

Tools: Biochemistry, structural biology, protein-protein and protein-RNA docking

Equipment: Protein expression and purification, NMR, docking, ITC, fluorescence polarization

Contact: https://le.ac.uk/people/cyril-dominguez

Brief Bio: I am a theoretical physicist interested in how matter comes alive. I studied Physics at the Complutense University of Madrid (2012) and obtained my PhD (2016) from the Technical University of Berlin, working at the Max Planck Institute of Colloids and Interfaces. After a postdoc jointly at the University of Oxford and Penn State University, from 2019 to 2023 I was a Group Leader at the Max Planck Institute for Dynamics and Self-Organization. I joined UCL as a Lecturer in 2024.

Condensate related research interests: nonequilibrium phase separation, enzyme-rich condensates, metabolism, condensate-membrane wetting, elastocapillarity, multicomponent phase separation

Tools: nonequilibrium statistical physics, continuum modelling, membrane elasticity, coarse-grained simulations

Equipment: Pen and paper, High Performance Computing

Contact: https://www.agudo-canalejo.com , j.agudo-canalejo@ucl.ac.uk

Brief Bio: My lab is interested in the interface between Diseases, Virology and RNA biology. We apply ‘omics technologies, biochemical and advanced imaging tools to characterise how different pathogens rewire cellular stress responses during infection focussing on the spatio-temporal control of cellular contents, their redistribution to biocondensates and the role of mitochondrial stress.

Condensate related research interests: Stress Granules, P-bodies, Paraspeckles, Replication organelles, Viruses, mammalian and insect models, stress responses, organelles crosstalk, antiviral condensates

Tools: Biochemistry, omics approaches and compositional analysis of condensates, advanced imaging

Equipment: single cell fractionation and subcellular analysis (inquire for availability)

Contact: https://www.pirbright.ac.uk/our-science/scientists/prof-nicolas-locker

Brief Bio: I seek to understand how the individual molecules encode for the (non-)equilibrium properties of (multi-component) condensates and materials. I develop coarse-grained representations of the molecular constituents, as well as simulation algorithms that allow the interpretation of macroscopic behaviours in terms of simple molecular concepts such as “stickers” and “spacers”. This assists in the rational manipulation of existing biological systems, as well as the engineering of artificial ones.

Condensate related research interests: Multi-component / Self-Assembly / Intrinsically Disordered Proteins / Rheology

Tools: Polymer Physics / Statistical Physics / Network topology / kinetic Monte Carlo / Coarse-Grained MD / Spacer-and-Sticker Models

Equipment: Inquire for availability of Research Software

Contact: https://charleyschaefer.github.io/ ; c.schaefer@leeds.ac.uk