People

Matthew G. Gold, PhD 

Matt graduated with a degree in Natural Sciences from the University of Cambridge. He completed his PhD with Professor David Barford in the Department of Structural Biology at the Institute of Cancer Research. He was a Sir Henry Wellcome Fellow with Professor John Scott FRS (University of Washington, Dept. Pharmacology) prior to starting his group at UCL.

Tim Church, PhD 

Tim graduated from the University of Surrey with a degree in Biochemistry in 2011. He completed his PhD with Professor Neil Marrion and Dr. Jon Brown at the University of Bristol in 2016, and joined the Gold lab after a year studying neuronal sodium channels with Stephanie Schorge at the Institute of Neurology. Tim is applying techniques including electrophysiology to investigate Protein Kinase A and calcineurin targeting in the synapse.

Ashton Curtis 

Ashton is a PhD student training on the BBSRC London Interdisciplinary Biosciences (LIDo) consortium PhD training programme. Ashton completed a MSci in Pharmacology at UCL, graduating with the AJ Clarke prize. He is focusing on understanding the structural basis of CaMKII targeting in the synapse.

Ryan Dowsell 

Ryan is a PhD student on the Wellcome Trust Institute of Structural and Molecular Biology (ISMB) training programme. Ryan completed his BSc at the University of Surrey and a MSc at Imperial College London. He is currently investigating the functions of adenylyl cyclases in synaptic plasticity by using various protein expression systems coupled with chemical crosslinking and mass spectrometry.

Ben Tagg 

Ben is a PhD Student on the BBSRC London Interdisciplinary Doctoral training programme (LIDO). Previously he completed an MRes in Brain Sciences at UCL, and a Biomedical Science BSc at KCL. Supervised jointly with the Farrant/Cull-Candy Lab, his work focuses on how post-translational modification of α-amino-3-hydroxy-5-methyl-4-isoxazolepropionic acid (AMPA) receptors and auxiliary proteins alter channel behaviour.

Sunny Chen

Sunny is studying on the UCL MRes Synthetic Biology course. She holds a Bachelor’s degree in biochemistry from Imperial College London, and has interned at the University of Science and Technology, Hong Kong. Sunny is interested in neuroscience including neurodegenerative disorders. She is currently using optical techniques to investigate the role of cAMP-dependent protein kinase in the brain.

Sindri Gislason 

Sindri is studying for an MSc in Neuroscience at UCL. He holds an undergraduate degree in psychology from Reykjavik University. Sindri is interested in molecular and systems neuroscience. He is currently applying a novel synaptic labelling method to investigate neuronal connectivity in collaboration with the Macaskill lab.