January 2026

 Happy New Year!

Congratulations to Anna Tythacott, who has graduated with an MSc in Biomedical Science!

Nahal hosted five Y12 students from High Storrs School, giving them a tour of the labs and facilities and an opportunity to observe zebrafish embryos.  They also explored the University of Sheffield campus and joined in a lab meeting.

November–December 2025

Getting ready for Xmas early with sparkly jumpers and paper hats.  
Thanks to Nahal for organising Xmas lunch for the C21 labs!

Spinning the disks! - Training session on the spinning disk confocal microscope

Tanya and Freek van Eeden ran another successful MSc practical class in Developmental Genetics, where students got to learn zebrafish CRISPR injection.

Lab outing for pizza!

October 2025

Nahal and Aaron spent a rewarding morning talking to students at High Storrs School at their Careers Day about further study and careers in the Biosciences.

September 2025

Ethan presented a poster, and Tanya gave a talk, at the 1st UK Zebrafish meeting, held at Exmouth and the Living Systems Institute, University of Exeter.  It was a lively meeting, full of excellent science and discussions, and we enjoyed meeting up with friends, colleagues and collaborators.  Many thanks to the local organisers Steffen, Soojin, Greg, Nik and Carol for such a great meeting!

Nahal returns to join the lab as a postdoc, continuing her work on disease modelling and characterising new CRISPR-generated mutants with interesting ear phenotypes!  

Nahal ran the Sheffield 10K in support of Crohn's and Colitis UK.

Our collaborative paper on zebrafish olfactory ionocytes is now out in Chemical Senses.  Former PhD student King Yee Cheung, jointly supervised by Suresh Jesuthasan, shares first authorship with Júlia Peloggia, a former PhD student in the Piotrowski lab.

August 2025

Many congratulations to Nahal Shahidan, who successfully passed her PhD viva, and gave an excellent pre-viva talk.  Many thanks to Emily Noël and Graham Ladds (University of Cambridge) for examining.  Nahal now takes a well-earned rest before returning to the lab as a postdoc in September.

Congratulations also to Anna Tythacott, who has completed her MSc research project in the lab, supervised by Nahal.  Anna gave an excellent poster presentation of her work as part of the MSc examination.

July 2025

Tanya gave a lecture on the use of zebrafish chemical screening for drug discovery at the 44th European School of Medicinal Chemistry (ESMEC), in beautiful Urbino, Italy.  Many thanks to the organisers for the invitation, and to all the students for their hard work and enthusiasm on the course!

In Sheffield, we hosted a visit from our collaborator Dr Giselle Wiggin from Nxera Pharma, a GPCR-based drug discovery company based in Cambridge.  Giselle gave a seminar and met with lab members, in addition to discussing collaborative projects. 

Later in the month, Nahal paid a reciprocal visit to the Nxera Pharma labs in Cambridge.  She gave a talk on her PhD project on the adhesion GPCR Adgrg6, and enjoyed a day of discussions with colleagues there.  She also met up with former PhD student Anzar Asad, who is now employed at the company and doing well:

Anzar -- Nxera Pharma team -- Nahal

We also enjoyed two excellent one-day meetings held in Sheffield: a BSDB Northern Developmental Biology meeting, at which Haseeb gave a talk, and a symposium for the Bateson Centre for Disease Mechanisms.

Congratulations to former undergraduate summer project student Isabella Russell-Smith, who graduated with a First Class MBiomedSci degree this month.  Issi will be soon be starting a PhD at Imperial College London (UK Dementia Research Institute) supervised by Dr Samuel Barnes, with the aim of developing new treatments for Alzheimer's disease.

June 2025

New lab photo!

Tanya attended the 2025 UK Cilia and Centrosome Network Meeting at the Institute for Child Health in London, and a memorial symposium at the Crick Institute to remember and celebrate the life of David Ish-Horowicz.  There are several touching obituaries of David available online, including those by Ilan Davis and Phil Ingham.
 

Haseeb, together with Emily and Corinna from C21, completed the Big Walk to raise funds for research into neurological diseases.