Rokos Postdoctoral Research Associates

Each year outstanding researchers holding recognised postdoctoral positions at the University of Cambridge are granted PDRA status at Queens’ College. The Rokos Postdoctoral Research Associates are members of the SCR, given rights to dine at High Table and granted a personal research allowance. This programme allows them to flourish and build relationships in an outstanding academic community.

Our current Rokos PDRAs are:

Name Research interests
Dr Javier Aguilera-Lizarrage
Dr Jack Atkinson
Dr Francisco Pinto Berkemeier
Dr Tianzhang Cai
Dr Laura Cimoli
Dr Sara de Felice
Dr Malte Dewies
Dr Sarah Down
Dr Surbhi Goel
Dr Filipa Gonçalves
Dr Anastasia Gusach

I joined Queens' in 2021. In my current project, I am using single-particle cryo-electron microscopy to understand fundamental mechanisms underlying the activation of important drug targets - human G-protein coupled receptors. This project lies at the intersection of biochemistry, physics, engineering and material science. The research is conducted at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology in the group of Chris Tate and is greatly facilitated by internal and external collaborations with leaders in the field of cryo-EM method development.

My interest to approach biological problems by means of physics comes from my degrees obtained at the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology. As a graduate student there in the laboratory of Prof. Vadim Cherezov, I applied protein crystallization and X-ray diffraction to the structure resolution of important human drug targets, cysteinyl leukotriene receptors type 1 and 2. These PhD project results already helped to suggest new drug candidates against a particular type of cancer and are potentially useful for creating better asthma treatment.
Dr Matthew Hines
Dr Micha Kaiser
Dr Catherine Klesner
Dr Paul Lohmann

I joined Queens' in 2022. My research aims to increase individual and societal welfare in the face of climate change by applying behavioural insights to pressing public policy challenges.

Dr Tom Meltzer
Dr Henry Moss
Dr Joana Nascimento

Joana joined Queens' in 2022. As a social anthropologist, Joana's research explores ethnographically the social, cultural and political-economic complexities of contemporary work and livelihood strategies, focusing on people’s everyday lived experiences and their relation to particular pasts and imagined futures. Her most recent research project involved 13 months of ethnographic fieldwork in the Outer Hebrides of Scotland, and focused on the work, workers and workplaces involved in the production of Harris Tweed – a renowned woollen textile that has been trademark-protected since 1910 and can only be produced in these islands, but is exported to over 50 countries around the world. Joana is currently working on a book manuscript based on this research, focusing on industry workers’ lived experiences and contributing to anthropological debates on work and labour, cultural production, inclusive belonging and place-making in contemporary capitalism.
Dr Peter Ochieng

Peter joined Queens' in 2022. He conducts research in natural language processing, biomedical ontologies and AI. He is keen to leverage work in these areas to help the development of more apps in human and veterinary medicine and agritech that could benefit people living in Africa. His recent research experimented with applying unsupervised learning techniques to develop conversational machine learning tools. He did this in the context of an app to help rural farmers diagnose disease in flocks of poultry, where the app needed to be able to handle both general questions and more specific ones. There is also the need to compress the very large AI models used in apps so that they can easily be used on mobile phones over mobile internet.
Dr Roly Perera
Dr Paul Richmond
Dr Tamsin A. Spelman

I joined Queens' in 2019. My research uses mathematical and computational techniques to address problems in microscale systems. I have an ongoing project modelling blood flow in the human eye, aiming to understand the observed patterns of bleeding after trauma. My primary research in the Sainsbury Laboratory is studying how nucleus morphology impacts growth within the root hair cell of a plant, specifically Arabidopsis.
Dr Marion Weinzierl
Dr Atiyeh Yeganloo