Gibco Cell Culture Heroes

Katie Sharrocks, PhD

Postdoctoral Scientist
The Francis Crick Institute, London, UK

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Katie is a postdoctoral researcher at the Francis Crick Institute in London. She currently works on a project as part of a Crick-AstraZeneca alliance collaboration scheme, using single-molecule super-resolution microscopy to investigate epidermal growth factor receptor di/oligomerization in non-small cell lung cancer cell lines. In 2024 she completed her PhD in Molecular Cell Biology at Imperial College London, investigating the impact of D2 dopamine G-protein coupled receptor mutants on dimerization and signaling. She has expertise in proximity based cell assays, signaling assays and microscopy imaging, including super-resolution microscopy.  Prior to starting a PhD, she completed an integrated Master’s degree in Biochemistry and Genetics in 2020, graduating with first class honors. Her work is driven by a desire to learn and gain new knowledge which could ultimately help patients in the future. Katie is passionate about communicating science in an accessible way so that as many people as possible have access to science and understand its significance in daily life. As part of this, she participates in outreach activities with schools and the general public and runs social media pages which communicate science and share the realities of working in science.

Itzel Bercerril-Rojas

PhD Student
Tecnologico de Monterrey, School of Medicine and Health Sciences. Mexico

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Itzel is a 1st year PhD student in Biomedical Science at Tec de Monterrey Mexico, where she studies tissue engineering and regenerative medicine in ocular tissues for clinical translation; implementing the use of scaffolds and cell culture to recover ocular opacities. She holds a Master of Science degree in biomedical science, partial coursed Master of Science in molecular biology at Montreal University, and a Bachelor of Biotechnology engineering at Tec de Monterrey, iGEM alumni holding gold medal award. Research internship fellow in Canada and international conferences in the USA and Germany.  Among her hobbies are swimming, photography, and creating science content as @itz_science.journey, part of her passion for science communication, with the objective of sharing knowledge in engaging ways, promoting a balanced life as a PhD student and orientate new candidates in their academic journeys by sharing my experience and tips through my recent project “Scientific Coffee”.

Marice Alcantara

Postdoctoral Fellow
City of Hope National Medical Center, CA, USA

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Marice received her PhD from Federation University in Australia and moved to City of Hope National Medical Center in California in 2019 following her training. She is passionate about working in immuno-oncology and believes that the immune system is key to improving patient responses to therapies in cancer. In the past 6 years training at City of Hope she has worked on both clinical trials and preclinical drug development in kidney cancer. Her most recent publication focused on a novel oligonucleotide-based targeting of myeloid cells to reprogram myeloid cell activity and function, and support T cell targeted therapies in renal cell carcinoma, the most common type of kidney cancer. She is passionate about bringing novel therapeutic strategies from the bench to bedside and hopes to one day bring novel drugs to patients.

Scott Davies

Postdoctoral Research Fellow
University of Birmingham, UK

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Scott received his PhD from the University of Birmingham, UK in 2018. The work stemming from this contributed to his first-author publication in 2019 which detailed the process of enclysis; the engulfment of CD4⁺ T cells by hepatocytes, which frequently results in the specific deletion of regulatory T cells. Following his PhD, Scott was award a Training Fellowship from the National Centre for the Replacement, Refinement and Reduction of Animals in Research (NC3Rs) where he expanded his microscopy capabilities and developed a model to image live human liver tissue ex vivo using multiphoton microscopy. Although this project was impeded by the COVID-19 pandemic, he used his skills to develop high-content imaging cell culture platforms to test the efficacy of treatments in preventing SARS-CoV-2 infection in vitro. He is now a Medical Research Foundation (MRF)-funded postdoctoral research fellow based at the University of Birmingham. His research interests include changes in lymphocyte metabolism and the molecular mechanisms of cell-in-cell structures, both in relation to autoimmune liver disease. He is passionate about microscopy, and strives to learn a wide variety of platforms, allowing him to apply the correct modality to the answer each research question. He is driven by answering questions about liver cell biology and strive to keep people smiling in science.

Heather Beasley

Postdoctoral Scholar
Vanderbilt University

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Heather K. Beasley is a postdoctoral research scholar at Vanderbilt University in the laboratory of Dr. Antentor Hinton Jr. (AJ), where she studies a novel mitochondrial protein, SLC25A46, in triple-negative breast cancer. Dr. Beasley earned a Ph.D. in Biomedical Sciences from Meharry Medical College with an emphasis in Biochemistry and Cancer Biology after completing a Master of Science degree from Alabama A&M and a Bachelor of Science degree from Auburn University. Dr. Beasley’s research employs various imaging techniques, including 3D microscopic methods, to investigate disease progression in vitro modeling and patient-derived xenograft models. Thus far in her postdoctoral training, Dr. Beasley has earned several awards and fellowships. She is the recipient of the UNCF and Bristol Myers Squibb, E.E. Just Postgraduate Fellowship in Life Sciences, and the Burroughs Wellcome Fund Postdoctoral Diversity Enrichment Program award. These two postdoctoral fellowships will fund her research for the next three years. Furthermore, Dr. Beasley champions diversity in STEM. Complementing her strong scientific publication record, she has seven peer-reviewed publications that address mentorship and diversity, equity, and inclusion of underrepresented minorities in STEM education and research. Additionally, Dr. Beasley strongly believes in advocacy for equitable outcomes for all cancer patients. Finally, her research reflects her passion for translational research, as she is highly sought after as a scientific communicator, panelist, podcaster, and social media influencer.

Leonardo Ferriera

Post-Doctoral Research Fellow
Medical University of South Carolina

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Cell-based gene therapies offer unprecedented promise for medicine. One day, it may be possible to cure degenerative diseases that consist of the loss of one or several specialized cell functions, as well as to decelerate the deterioration our bodies experience during aging. However, several hurdles must be surpassed in order to establish cell transplantation therapies, a major one being rejection by the recipient's immune system. This challenge is particularly prominent for autoimmune disorders, such as type 1 diabetes and multiple sclerosis, where the immune system mediates the destruction of self-tissues. During my PhD, in the laboratories of Jack Strominger and Chad Cowan (Department of Stem Cell and Regenerative Biology) at Harvard University, I worked on transcriptional regulation in human pregnancy, a longstanding enigma in immunology and a seldom studied model of immune tolerance. In addition, I was the first to show successful genome editing in primary human T cells and hematopoietic stem cells using CRISPR/ Cas9 and was part of a team creating universally compatible human pluripotent stem cells. As a postdoctoral scholar in the laboratories of Qizhi Tang (Department of Surgery) and Jeff Bluestone (Diabetes Center) at the University of California San Francisco, I am working on next generation regulatory T cell therapies for type 1 diabetes and organ transplant rejection. I envision that we will be able to use our capacity to engineer the human genome with high precision and efficiency to manipulate our immune system, enabling us to treat several devastating illnesses now labeled as incurable. I am highly committed to make that vision become a reality.

Natalia Herreira

Albert Einstein College of Medicine

My name is Natalia Guadalupe Herrera and I obtained a BS in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology with a minor in Bioinformatics from the University of California, Santa Cruz (UCSC) in 2015. It was during my undergraduate studies that I discovered my interest for scientific research. Through the STEM diversity programs at UCSC I obtained the support I needed to pursue undergraduate research. I performed research in the laboratory of Dr. Victoria Auerbuch Stone, where I investigated mechanisms of Yersinia pseudotuberculosis virulence. After graduating, I spent a year in the lab of Dr. Auerbuch Stone to finalize my project and submit my first co-first author publication. In Fall of 2016, I began graduate school at Albert Einstein College of Medicine where I joined the lab of Dr. Steven C. Almo in the department of Biochemistry. The Almo lab focuses on a variety of biologically relevant questions including projects focused on characterizing the interactions and networks of extracellular proteins (i.e. secreted and cell surface proteins) through the use of high throughput platforms. My project stems from this work and focuses on characterizing a novel interaction discovered in our lab. In addition, the Almo lab focuses on developing biologics to modulate CD8+ T cell activity in an antigen specific manner. Another one of my projects focuses on developing these biologics and characterizing the effects of these biologics on T cell activation.