CRG lab, Barcelona, Spain
Maria Pia
Pia Cosma received her PhD in Cellular and Molecular Genetics
from the School of Medicine, Federico II University of Naples, in 2000. From
1997 to 2000, she was a Marie Curie Fellow at the Research Institute of
Molecular Pathology (IMP) in Vienna, and in 2000 she became a postdoctoral
fellow at the Telethon Institute of Genetics and Medicine (TIGEM) in Naples.
From 2004 to 2010, she was a Lecturer at the European School of Molecular
Medicine, and from 2009 to 2015, she served as an Honorary Associate Investigator
at the Institute of Genetics and Biophysics (IGB) in Naples. In April 2010, she
moved to Barcelona, Spain, to join the Centre for Genomic Regulation (CRG) as a
Senior Scientist and Catalan Institution for Research and Advanced Studies
(ICREA) Research Professor. In 2025, she was elected Acadèmica
Corresponent of the Reial Acadèmia de Medicina de Catalunya.
Since 2024, she has been the Coordinator of the Systems and Synthetic Biology
Program at CRG. She has delivered numerous invited talks at major international
conferences and research institutes and has received several prestigious
awards, including the Marie Curie Excellence Award (2005), the Order of Merit
of the Italian Republic (2007), election as an EMBO Member (2010), the
Barcelona City Prize (2015), EIC National Champion (2021), and the EIC Woman
Leadership Programme Award (2022). She has been awarded major research grants,
including an ERC Grant (2009) and a Human Frontier Science Program (HFSP) Grant
(2010), and has coordinated European Innovation Council (EIC) projects,
including Cellviever(2016) and EcaBox (2021).
Post Docs
Eimear Byrne
Eimear received her BSC Physiology degree from the University College Dublin, Ireland, and PhD in Diabetic Retinopathy from Queen's University Belfast, United Kingdom. Eimear studies eye physiology, retinal disease, and regeneration.
Mikhail Rotkevich
Mikhail obtained his PhD from the Barcelona Supercomputing Center in Spain. His research integrates AI, computational methods, and biological sciences, with a particular emphasis on image analysis across various microscopy methods and single-cell studies.
Megan Da Mota
Mégane received her PhD in Molecular Biology and Genetics from the University of Montpellier in France. She studies DNA topology, loop extrusion and 3D genome organisation.
PhD Students
Carlotta Viana
Carlotta received her Biomedical Sciences degree from the University of York, UK, and her Master's degree from the University of Barcelona, Spain. She is interested in early detection of Acute Myeloid Leukemia, by combining super-resolution microscopy and artificial intelligence.
Marta Cadevall Angles
Marta received his Biomedical Sciences degree from the University of Barcelona, Spain. She is interested in setting up efficient cell therapy approaches for retinal regeneration.
Sarah Royle
Sarah received her Natural Sciences degree from the University of Cambridge, in the United Kingdom and Masters of Multidisciplinary Research in Experimental Sciences from Barcelona Insititute of Science and Technology. She studies the interplay between chromatin compartmentalization and loop extrusion.
Manuel Fernandez Merino
Manuel received his Nanoscience and Nanotechnology degree from the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (Spain) and Master’s Degree between the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (Germany), and the University of Marseille (France). He studies the link between genome organization and gene regulation by using integrative approaches to model chromatin based on Hi-C and imaging experiments.
Miguel Guerra-Solano
Miguel received his bachelors and masters in molecular biology from West Chester University located in Pennsylvania, USA. He will be studying retinal disease and regeneration but is also interested in gene editing/prime editing and overall genome manipulation.
Lab Manager
Umberto Di Vicino
Umberto received his high school diploma in chemistry in Naples, Italy. He is a research technician with a specialization in mouse visual systems and retina electrophysiology. He is managing general lab organization and maintenance and assists with the setup of experiments and procedures.
GDPH lab, Guangzhou, China
Associate Professor
Hui Zhang
Hui completed her PhD at the Military
Academy of Medical Science in Beijing. She had her post-doctor training at Mayo
Clinic and Tsinghua University. She is currently working as an Associate
Professor at the Guandong People’s Hospital (GDPH). Hui is interested in
Integrating super-resolution microscopy technology with the research on
epigenetic regulation to investigate how the chromatin structure is reassembled
and how gene expression is regulated during the process of cell fate
conversion.
Research associate
Hui Zhong
Zhong Hui received her PhD at University of Macau. Hui is interested in cell fate determination during ESC differentiation, and how epigenetics affect cell fate and transcription factor kinetics.
Jinghe Xie
Jinghe Xie obtained her PhD in bioinformatics at Chinese Academy of Sciences. She has extensive experience in multi-omics data analysis, including genomics, transcriptomics, proteomics, metabolomics, single-cell omics, and spatial omics. She is interested in developing and optimizing data analysis pipelines, personalized data analysis and visualization, as well as applying machine learning in stem cell research.
Post Docs
Wenhui Wang
Wenhui completed her PhD at University of Strasbourg. She is interested in investigating the chromatin structure changes during cell senescence and tumorigenesis.
Di Xu
Di completed his PhD at Jinan University. Di is interested in the retina regeneration in zebrafish. His work is supported by Postdoc fellowship from Guangdong province.
Piniel Alphayo Kambey
Piniel obtained his PhD in Neurobiology
from Xuzhou Medical University. Following this, he pursued his first
postdoctoral fellowship at the Guangzhou Institutes of Biomedicine and Health,
Chinese Academy of Sciences. His research interests lie in neurodegeneration,
gene therapy, gene editing, CRISPR-Cas9-mediated gene manipulation, stem cell
therapy, and blastocyst complementation.
Chenggan Zhu
Chenggan received a master degree in Natural Science in the field of Physical Chemistry from the University of Chinese Academy of Sciences. He then obtained the PhD from the Pompeu Fabra University. He is interested in studying the chromatin structure remodeling of mouse embryos in pre-implantation stages.
PhD Students
Limei Zhong
Limei got her master degree in Animal nutrition at Sichuan Agricultural University. Limei is interest in studying chromatin structure differences in somatic and pluripotent cells using super resolution microscopy and AI.
Aiping Wang
Aiping graduated from Guangzhou University of Traditional Chinese Medicine. She is focused on setting up stem cell therapy for retinal degenerative diseases in non-human primates and on the identification of master regulators controlling regeneration.
Yao Li
Yao received the bachelor degree major in Bioengineering and master degree in Cytobiology at Jinan University. His research interests are to identify master regulators controlling vertebrate müller glia-mediated retinal regeneration.
Lab Manager
Yang Zheng
Zheng received her bachelor of medicine at
Shandong Second Medical University. She coordinates critical functions
encompassing biosafety compliance monitoring, experimental material procurement
and equipment lifecycle management.