Current lab members:
Dr Jo Parker: Senior Research Associate
Jo joined the group in 2011 as a senior research associate to develop and expand the biochemical characterisation of transporters. Previously Jo was a Principle Scientific Officer at Cancer Research UK’s Clare Hall laboratory where she developed biochemical assays to understand pathways linked to DNA damage tolerance. Jo is currently working on the nucleotide sugar transporters and proton coupled transport systems. ORCID 0000-0003-2964-2720.
Dr Gabriel Kuteyi: Research Associate
Gabriel joined the group in 2014 after completing his PhD with Professor Roslyn Bill at Aston University in Birmingham. Gabriel is currently developing methods for the overexpression of eukaryotic membrane proteins using mammalian and insect cell culture.
Dr Gurdeep Minhas: Post-doctoral Research Associate
Gurdeep joined the group in 2014 after completing his DPhil at the MRC Mitochondrial Biology Unit at the University of Cambridge. Gurdeep is currently working on peptide and amino acid transporters. ORCID 0000-0003-4320-1243.
Dr Feng Qu: Post-doctoral Research Associate.
Feng joined the group in 2019 as a post-doctoral research associate funded on a BBSRC grant to understand peptide binding dynamics in the POT family of proton coupled transporters. Feng obtained her Ph.D from Imperial College London researching ABC transporters, prior to this she obtained a Masters in Drug Discovery and Translational Biology from the University of Edinburgh and her B.Sc. from the China Pharmaceutical University in Nanjing in the P.R. China.
Mr Philipp Bräuer: Wellcome Trust Structural Biology DPhil student
Philipp is a Wellcome Trust Structural Biology DPhil student interested in structural studies of the KDEL receptor. Before beginning his project in the lab he worked briefly at the XFEL hub at Diamond. Philipp completed is BSc in Biochemistry at Imperial College London, during which he spent a year in the Lab of Esben Lorentzen at the Max Plank Institute of Biochemistry in Munich working on x-ray crystallography of proteins involved in intraflagellar transport in cilia. ORCID 0000-0003-4127-2638.
Mr Oliver Adams: BBSRC DTC DPhil student
Oliver joined the Newstead lab in 2017 as a BBSRC Interdisciplinary Biosciences DTP student following a short Molecular Dynamics rotation with Dr.Philip Fowler (Nuffield Department of Medicine), by whom he is jointly supervised. His current research focuses on the structural characterisation of transporters involved in infectious disease, especially those from M. tuberculosis.
Mr William Wu: Wellcome Trust OxIon DPhil student
Having completed a BSc in Neuroscience at University College London, I came to Oxford to undertake a DPhil under the generous funding of the Wellcome Trust (OxIon). I’m interested in understanding the mechanism of membrane transport through computational and experimental approaches. I use molecular dynamic simulations and quantum mechanical calculations to probe the energy landscape of the ligand binding as well as the conformational change of transporter. I also tested the results functionally though transport assays and structurally using x-ray crystallography.
Mr Dimitris Kolokouris: BBSRC DTC DPhil student
Dimitris is a BBSRC-funded D.Phil student (BBSRC DTP) with additional support from the Onassis Foundation. His undergraduate studies are in Pharmacy (M.Pharm) specialising in medicinal chemistry and he is a registered pharmacist by the Ministry of Health in Greece. Dimitris joined the Newstead group in July 2019 to pursue a D.Phil focusing on structural, functional and computational studies on eukaryotic proton-coupled amino acid transporters. He is jointly supervised by Prof. Phill Biggin.
Mr Mark Löbel: Biochemistry DPhil student
Mark joined the Newstead lab in 2019 as a Clarendon Scholar undertaking his DPhil research on lysosomal membrane proteins. He obtained his B.Sc. and M.Sc. at the University of Wuerzberg, Germany, where he worked on Ubiquitin-Activating Enzyme Fragment-Based Screening. He also undertook a 4-month internship with John Kuriyan at UC Berkeley, researching Substrate Preferences along the Src-Family Kinases.
Ms Kathryn Smith: Masters Student. Kathryn is currently a Part II Masters student from the Department of Biochemistry and is a student at Exeter College, Oxford.