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Vasilieva Lab
RNA Regulation Laboratory
Former Lab Members
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Post-doc
Madeline Eaton
Madeleine graduated from Imperial College London with her BSc in Biochemistry, where she worked on novel methods of identifying covalent drug fragments against KDM5a, a novel cancer drug target.
She worked jointly between the labs of Lidia Vasilieva and Jason Schnell, and used NMR to dissect the role of Spt5 in transcriptional termination, particularly focusing on its interactions with RNA and the exoribonuclease Xrn2.
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Post-doc
Niek Schoemaker
Niek joined us in 2025, and his 6-month internship focused on understanding how the regulatory subunits PPN1 and SWD2.2 modulate the Dis2 phosphatase within the SWD2.2-PPN1-Dis2 holoenzyme, a component of the CPF. This project included optimising Dis2 purification, determining the holoenzyme’s protein structure using NMR and characterising how these regulatory proteins influence Dis2 dephosphorylation.
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Post-doc
Adrien Birot
Adrien joined our lab after completing his PhD with Jean-Paul Javerzat at IBGC, Bordeaux, France, where he studied the regulation of cohesin by phosphorylation. Adrien focused on understanding how the nuclear exosome is targeted to specific mRNAs by identifying novel exosome cofactors using proteomic and genetic approaches. In a complementary approach, Adrien used smFISH to understand the interplay between mRNA export, nuclear retention and decay.
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PhD student
Alex was a PhD student from the Wellcome Trust program in Structural biology co-supervised by Jon Grimes (STRUBi, Oxford). Alex is interested in understanding the role of regulated phosphorylation in transcription using biochemical and structural approaches.
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Master's student
Ava Chan
Ava obtained her BSc in Hong-Kong. She joined our lab as a MSc student. Ava would like to understand the role of CID-RRM factors in transcription and mRNA 3’end formation.
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PhD student
Katie Oberheim
Katie joined our lab after completing her MSc at King's College London, and she is originally from Birmingham. Katie was interested in understanding the mechanisms underlying targeting the nuclear exosome to RNA substrates using a biochemical approach.
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PhD student
Emily Priest
Emily completed her BSc at the University of York. Emily studied the molecular mechanisms underlying cofactor targeting of the nuclear exosome to mRNAs using a biochemical approach. She also collaborated with Adrien to understand further mechanistic links between mRNA decay and export.
Dong-hyuk Heo
Dong-Hyuk did his PhD at Korea University in Seoul, South Korea with Cheol-won Yun. Dong-hyuk would like to understand molecular mechanisms involved in coordinating transcription and RNA regulation.
Takuya Kajitani
Takuya visited our lab for several months and had contributed to a project focused on understanding role of RNA polymerase II pausing in transcriptional regulation. He has obtained a fellowship to continue his research in Japan.
Dogukan Ulgen
Dogukan obtained his MSc in Ankara, Turkey. In our lab he studies function of proteins that interact with mRNA 5’end CAP structure (S. pombe CBC1 and 2, homologues to human CBP80 and 20) in RNA regulation.
Tea Kecman
Tea has been a PhD student in our lab. Tea’s work has contributed to understanding how RNA polymerase II transitions from elongation to termination stage of transcription. She has now taken up a position as senior research scientist at University associated company in Netherland
Cornelia Kilchert
Cornelia Kilchert joined our lab as a SNF and DFG postdoctoral fellow. Cornelia discovered a connection between efficiency of mRNA-processing (splicing) and targeting of nuclear exosome. She demonstrated that this mechanism regulates levels of specific transcripts to mediate survival during DNA damage. Cornelia has now established her own research group in Gießen, Germany funded by Emmy-Noether programme.
Sina Wittmann
Sina was a PhD student in our lab. Sina’s work shed light on the mechanisms involved in mRNA 3’end processing and termination of RNA polymerase II transcription. She is now a postdoctoral fellow at Tony Hyman’s lab at Max Planck, Germany funded by EMBO long-term fellowship.
Beth Watts
Beth was working on the project focused on understanding role of chromatin modifications and transcription factors in supressing unwanted cryptic transcription. She is now a chemistry teacher in St. Edwards school in Oxford.
Sneha Shah
Sneha was a PhD student. Her work uncovered role for non-coding transcription in regulating expression of adjacent protein-coding in response environmental stimuli. She subsequently went to do a postdoc at Harvard, Boston, USA supported by the Wellcome Trust/DBT India Alliance Postdoctoral Fellowship.
Adam Volanakis
Adam was a MSc student in the lab. His work in our lab had revealed unexpected
role of mRNA splicing in negatively regulating mRNA levels. Adam completed Wellcome Trust funded PhD in Oxford with Nick Proudfoot and is now a postdoc at Harvard funded by Long term EMBO fellowship.
Sarah Coy
Following a postdoc in our lab Sarah took a job as a program manager at Nuffield Department of Population Health. Sarah was interested to understand how some transcripts such as stable non-coding RNAs involved in splicing and rRNA processing (sn/snoRNAs) are trimmed rather than degraded by the nuclear RNA exosome. She identified a mechanism involved in stabilisation of the processed ncRNAs producing functional mature sn/snoRNAs.
Monica Passoni
Monica did a short postdoc in our lab. She collaborated with Adam on project investigating mechanism of spliceosome-mediated-decay and they shared first co-authorship in Genes and Development paper. She is now dedicated to her family raising her children.
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