Lab Members

Postdoctoral Researchers

Dr. Marc Mora Hortal
Marc-websiteI obtained my Chemistry degree from the University of Barcelona in 2015. During my time here, I undertook a research project in the Self Organized Complexity and Self Assembled Material group, investigating chiral structures in liquid crystals. I obtained my PhD in the Garcia-Manyes lab (funded by Fight for Sight) using single molecule force-clamp spectroscopy to capture the molecular onset of protein misfolding. I am now a postdoctoral researcher in the lab, working on different aspects of mechanobiology.
Email: [email protected]

 Dr. Alex Gorey

 Dr. Ana López Mengual

 

PhD Students

 
Tong Zhu
I obtained my bachelor’s degree in Biotechnology in the national life science and technology talent training base at Shandong University in 2017. After graduating, I finished my MRes in Molecular and Cellular Biosciences from Imperial College London where I worked one more year as a research assistant on engineering Turing Patterns in a bacterial chassis with a bottom-up synthetic biology approach. I am currently a PhD under the supervision of Prof. Sergi Garcia-Manyes and Prof. Catherine Shanahan within K-CSC programme with the project Unravelling the Nanomechanics of the LINC Complex across-scales: from single molecules to individual cells”.
 

 

Felix Gehres

I graduated with an MSc from Maastricht University in 2020. During that program, I undertook two research placements. The first project dealt with the optimization of a novel data-independent acquisition (DIA) technique for desorption electrospray ionization mass spectrometry imaging (DESI-MSI). In a second project during my MSc, I studied the structure-activity relationships of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS). In June 2021, I started a PhD under the supervision of Prof. Sergi Garcia-Manyes. The title of my project is “Unveiling the nanomechanical properties of the LINC complex proteins with single molecule resolution”.

Email: [email protected]

Rosie Austin

In 2021, I completed my bachelor’s degree in Pharmaceutical and Chemical Sciences from the University of Brighton. During my undergraduate degree, I undertook a year in industry where I worked as a Materials Scientist. Here I used a variety of techniques and measurement systems to investigate issues with pharmaceutical and consumer products. In October 2021, I joined the Garcia-Manyes group as a PhD student to study the nanomechanical effects of oxidative-stress post-translational modifications in cardiac titin using magnetic tweezers force spectroscopy.

Email: [email protected]

Natalie Milmoe

Cris Escalona López

Georgia Cohen

 

Associated members

Dr. Amy Beedle

Photo on 21-01-2014 at 14.07In 2018 I completed my PhD in the Garcia-Manyes where I was using single molecule force spectroscopy AFM to investigate how mechanical forces can modulate the reactivity of individual proteins.  After working in Sergi’s lab using the newly built magnetic tweezers set-up to investigate proteins with low mechanical stability, in 2019 I moved to IBEC (Barcelona) with A Sir Henry Wellcome Fellowship from the Wellcome Trust to study different aspects of cellular mechanotransduction.
Email: [email protected]

Dr. Rafael Tapia-Rojo

I completed my Ph.D. in Physics at the University of Zaragoza, working on the development of computational models at the mesoscopic level and the implementation of free energy methods for an array of biological problems. In 2016, I joined the Fernandez lab at Columbia University as a postdoctoral researcher, where I developed magnetic tweezers instrumentation and studied the physics of protein folding under force.  

In December 2020, I joined the Garcia-Manyes lab as a postdoctoral researcher.  

Email: [email protected]

 

Lab Technicians

Dr Patricia Paracuellos

Email:  [email protected]

Lab Alumni:

  • Palma Rico Lastres
  • Yong J Wang (Jim)
  • David Giganti
  • Ainhoa Lezamiz
  • Aisling Williams
  • Bob-Dan Lechner
  • Marta Castro-Lopez
  • Josep Relat-Goberna
  • Judit Perales-Calvo
  • Giulia Galli
  • Elvira Infante
  • Andrew Stannard
  • Stephanie Board
  • Kateryna Lemishko
  • Fani Panagaki