Jeremy Mottram is Professor in Pathogen Biology and director of the York Biomedical Research Institute. He trained as a biochemist at the University of Kent at Canterbury (BSc) and the University of Glasgow (PhD) before carrying out postdoctoral work at the University of California San Francisco in molecular parasitology, with a focus on gene expression and RNA splicing in African trypanosomes.  He returned to Glasgow for further postdoctoral research in the newly formed Wellcome Unit of Molecular Parasitology, before developing an independent molecular parasitology research programme as an MRC Senior Research Fellow (1993-2003), being appointed Professor of Molecular and Cellular Parasitology in 2000.  In Glasgow Jeremy served as Head of the Division of Infection and Immunity (2008-2010), Deputy Director of the Institute of Infection, Immunity and Inflammation (2010-2013) and Dean of Graduate Studies (2013–2015). He joined the Department of Biology at the University of York in 2016. He has been a member of the MRC Infections and Immunity Board (2010–2014) and has been on both national and international review boards for the Institute Pasteur, INSERM and NIMR. Jeremy is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Biology and a Pesquisador Visitante Especial, Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

Nathaniel is a Research Fellow currently working to understand how the interplay of ubiquitination and phosphorylation regulates life-cycle progression in Leishmania. He uses genetic, proteomic, and chemical biology approaches to investigate the unique molecular and cellular biology of the parasite. The goal is to identify avenues that can be exploited to identify new anti-leishmanial medicines. Nathaniel gained his PhD at the University of Glasgow (2008-2012) and conducted a postdoc at Washington University in St Louis (2013-2016) before moving to York. He has extensive experience in the molecular biology of parasitic protozoans (Trypanosoma brucei, Toxoplasma gondii and Leishmania sp.), in particular how protein kinases are important for parasite survival, life-cycle progression, and virulence of chronic infections.  Initially, in York, Nathaniel was funded by GSK and the GCRF Global Network for Neglected Tropical Diseases to develop a research theme focused on the epigenetic regulation of transcription in Leishmania by bromodomain containing proteins – which are also tractable proteins for potential drug discovery programs.

As a Research Associate, Rachel is involved in tagging proteins for localisation studies, loss-of-function genetics, and phenotypic screening to understand the regulation and function of Leishmania mexicana protein kinases. Rachel completed a PhD at the University of Glasgow, working with Professor Richard McCulloch in the field of molecular parasitology, specifically on RAD51 and RAD51 paralogs in Trypanosoma brucei. Prior to this, she completed an MSc in Medical Molecular Microbiology at the University of Nottingham where she worked on the regulatory mechanisms of quorum sensing genes in Pseudomonas aeruginosa. She completed a BSc in Microbiology at the National University of Ireland, Galway. Previous to her posts at the University of York, she has worked for the Yorkshire Ambulance Service as clinical audit manager and also for the University Hospital of South Manchester as infection prevention surveillance and audit officer.

Juliana is a Postdoctoral Research Associate in the Mottram lab. Juliana obtained her Bachelors in Pharmacist-Biochemist (2008) and her MSc (2011) in Infection Disease from the Universidade Federal do Espírito Santo (UFES), Brazil. She completed her PhD (2015) within the UFES with one year of sandwich program in the Wellcome Trust Centre for Molecular Parasitology, Institute of Infection, Immunity and Inflammation at the University of Glasgow. Currently, Juliana is investigating molecular markers associated with natural miltefosine resistance in the Leishmania parasite.

Romina is a Postdoctoral Research Associate in the Mottram lab. Romina obtained her degree in Molecular Biology from the University of San Luis (UNSL, Argentina, 2013) and later her PhD in Molecular Biology and Biotechnology from the University of San Martin (UNSAM, Argentina, 2018) where she investigated new mechanisms involved in the pathogenesis of T. vaginalis. She joined the Mottram lab as a Postdoctoral researcher in 2019, where she is applying genetic and proteomic approaches to elucidate the role of kinases in different aspects of the biology of Leishmania mexicana.  

Charlotte is a Research Technician in the Mottram lab. She obtained her Bsc(Hons) in Biochemistry with an Industrial Placement year in 2019 from the University of Bath. Her undergraduate course involved a year researching lysosomal storage disorders at Cardiff University. She joined the lab in 2019, primarily to assist research on the Kinome project, particularly supporting the work of Nicola Baker with characterising a range of protein kinases in Leishmania. 

Eden is a Post-doctoral Research Associate in Jeremy Mottram lab. He obtained his BSc in Biology and his MSc in Sciences with emphasis on Cell Biology and Parasitology working with mevalonate kinase, a conserved glycosomal enzyme that is unusually secreted and modulates T. cruzi invasion. In 2016 Eden obtained his PhD at the Federal University of Sao Paulo working with Prof. Renato Mortara, investigating the role of host-cell cytoskeleton associated proteins during invasion of extracellular amastigotes of Trypanosoma cruzi. From 2017 to 2021 he worked at Prof. Renato Mortara’s lab as a Post-doctoral research fellow funded by The Sao Paulo Research Foundation investigating how trypomastigotes of T. cruzi manages its scape from the host cell. During this period he spent 12 months at Dr. Kevin Tyler’s lab – University of East Anglia (Norwich – UK) as a visiting researcher funded by the Sao Paulo Research Foundation for abroad internship. Currently at Jeremy Mottram lab Eden is working on the Welcome trust funded grant – LeishGEM. His main focus is the subcellular localization of proteins from Leishmania mexicana using proteomic approaches associated with LOPIT-DC techniques. In addition he is also working with genetic modified cell lines for the identification of molecules important for the interaction of Leishmania parasite with its host.

​Megan is an MRC DiMeN DTP iCASE PhD student researching the ubiquitin-proteasome system and drug discovery for leishmaniasis, in collaboration with Boehringer Ingelheim. Megan graduated with an integrated masters in Biology from the University of Leeds in 2022. Prior to joining the Mottram lab Megan worked as an Advanced Research Assistant in malaria at the Wellcome Sanger Institute. She first worked on antimalarial drug resistance in Plasmodium falciparum, assessing the impact of genetic background on antimalarial susceptibility and parasite fitness. She then began research to optimise next-generation sequencing (NGS) technologies for malaria parasite genomic surveillance, primarily working on projects that utilized Oxford Nanopore Technologies (ONT) MinION.  Megan finished her time at the Wellcome Sanger Institute working in a high-throughput sequencing laboratory for malaria and influenza.