PEOPLE

Dr. Teresa Rayon – Group Leader

I obtained my MSc in Biology from the Autónoma University of Madrid in 2007. For my PhD at Miguel Manzanares’ group at CNIC in Madrid, I studied the first cell fate choice in mammalian pre-implantation development. In January 2016 I joined the Briscoe lab at The Francis Crick Institute in London supported by an EMBO postdoctoral fellowship. In February 2022 I opened the Comparative Stem Cell Dynamics lab at the Babraham Institute in Cambridge, funded by an ERC Starting Grant and a BBSRC Institute Strategic Programmes Grant (ISPG).

Dr. Chiara Azzi – Postdoctoral Research Fellow

Start date: September 2022

Eleonore Ocana – PhD student

Start date: October 2022

Loukik Doshi – Research Assistant

Start date: November 2023

Berta Cava – Postdoctoral Research Fellow

Start date: October 2024

Berta Cava Cami graduated in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at the University Rovira I Virgili (Tarragona, Spain). She is passionate about reproductive biology. Her undergraduate thesis at the University of the West of Scotland focused on the effect of a bacterial species in preterm labour. In 2018, she completed a MSc in Cytogenetics and Reproductive Biology at the Autonomous University of Barcelona, investigating the effect of a phosphatase on meiotic progression during in vitro spermatogenesis. She moved to Brussels for her PhD thesis focused on optimising human oocyte in vitro maturation (IVM) at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB). Berta will be working on diapause as a model for tempo perturbation in the lab. Outside the lab, you can find her hiking and climbing; she is a very sporty person but also enjoys a cup of coffee with a book or board games.

Debbie Drage – Mouse Embryologist

Start date: September 2025

My love of working with mouse embryos started 1993 right here at Babraham institute. I moved on to manage a transgenic facility unit for over 12 years at the University of Cambridge. In 2019 I decided to move back to the bench and joined Wolf Reik’s group to do more fun and varied work with embryos. While here I  developed a  trim-away injection method as well as looked after Wolf’s project licence by writing renewal applications and completing annual returns.  With a return to Babraham I look forward to a new challenge of working on diapause where I hope to help with further unlocking the triggers of this pathway and how this phenomenom occurs and then recovers.

On a personal level come and talk to me about dogs, horses, bicycles and motorbikes. I love being outside!!! 

Adriana Lamas Bancalari – PhD Student

Start date: October 2025

Adriana completed her BSc in Medical Biosciences at Imperial College London, where she investigated the effects of aneuploidy on early human development during her final-year placement. Adriana joined the lab on a CTP Studentship, where she is working in collaboration with bit.bio. Her PhD work focuses on understanding the effects of transcription factor overexpression on the timing dynamics of motor neuron development. When she is not in the lab, she enjoys travelling, hiking mountains, knitting, and singing.

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Josephine Blagrove – PhD rotation student

October – December 2023

Jo completed an Integrated Masters degree in biological science at the University of Oxford. Her Masters research focused on the evolution of the homeobox gene family ETCHbox and its role in pre-implantation development.
Jo’s placement at the Babraham Institute was part of the BBSRC Biosciences DTP at the University of Cambridge. Jo developed a technique to grow and differentiate motor neurons within micropatterns, to control the role of the cellular environment in the study of motor neuron differentiation.

Max Perrin – Research Assistant

May – September 2024