People

Memorable lab outings, Current and Past Lab Members

April 2024

Sofia Esteban-Serna, a PhD student in the lab, won a poster prize at the Microbiology Society conferences in Edinburgh presenting her awesome poster on Nrd1-Nab3 and how they reduce noise in gene expression in the yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae. Congratulations (again)!! Second award for this project (and this poster).

March 2024

Stuart McKellar, my former PhD student, and his partner came to visit us in Edinburgh and we went to our local watering hole, the Scottish Malt whisky society. Besides drinking a few single-malt and single cask whiskies, we also sampled some of the society's blends, which were very impressive .... So was the bill.....

March 2024

A wee lab wine tasting event to celebrate Niki's thesis submission! She will be moving on to working for a company soon. She has been with the lab for around 5 years and we are very sad to se her leave.

March 2024

After tasting wine one of course has to have some food! Off to the Greek in Leith!

May 2022

Party on the Kings Buildings Campus to celebrate our RBPome paper getting accepted in Nature Communications! Picture of all the members of my lab at that time and where they were from. 

Loads of selfies made that day!

June 2021

The lab's first outing since the end of the many lockdowns we had! 

September 2018

Erika Urdaneta's leaving party. We went to a Whisky tasting at the Scottish Malt Whisky society in Edinburgh!

December 2017

Granneman lab celebrating positive outcomes from MRCSRF (Sander) and EMBO LTF (Ross) fellowship applications. 
After the Christmas dinner we ended up in our favorite watering hole, the Scottish Malt Whisky society.

June 2017

Granneman lab retreat in York.
Picture was taken using a film that generates very cool and high-quality black and white pictures.

March 2015

Granneman lab says goodbye to Christel Sirocchi. Last lab outing with Christel in a nice restaurant in Edinburgh.

December 2014 

“Sjoelen” in the pub! Rob brought his Dutch shuffleboard to the pub when we went on a Granneman lab night out. Initially the locals were a bit confused..but after a couple of pints everybody was shuffling away! Not all of the stones landed where they should.
It is obvious who dominated the game....

April 2013

Lab outing to Saint Andrews!

On the left. Elena Burlacu and Alina Zaplatina. Right: Sander Granneman, Maarten Tuijtel and Ralph Hector.

 

Current lab members


 

Sander Granneman 

 

Group Leader and lab bioinformatician and doing this and doing that....
 
Gabriele Bagusinskaite
EASTBIO PhD student (2022 - present)
Is working on RNases and the dynamics of RNA decay in S. aureus!
 
Sofia Esteban Serna
Wellcome Trust iCM PhD student (2021- present)
Is working on understanding the role or RNA-binding proteins in regulating gene expression noise.
 
Wei Li
Darwin Trust PhD student (2021 - 2024)
Post-doc (2024- present)
Working on transcription factors from nasty bugs!
 
Mehak Chauhan
Darwin Trust PhD student (2021 - present)
Working on nasty toxins!
 
Hugh McCaughan
Wellcome Trust ECAT PhD student (2019 - present)
Is working on RBPs and antibiotic resistance!
Has also made a phenominal contribution to COVID-19 research!!!
 

Co-superviser


 

Joshua Mareschal
Wellcome Trust iCM Phd student (shared with Chris Sibley lab).
Is working on CLIP, 2C and neuronal cells!
 

Visitors


Theresa-Marie Froehlich
Visiting ERASMUS student from Tubingen Univerisity (2019 - 2020)
 
Ross Cordiner
Visiting post-doctoral fellow from Torben Heick Jensen’s lab (2017 - 2018).
He obtained an EMBO and Marie Curie LTF fellowships for his project!
 
Erika Urdaneta
Another very talented visiting PhD student from Benedikt Beckmann's lab (2018)
Funded by an EMBO short-term fellowship.
 
Fredrik Lackmann
A very talented visiting PhD student from Lars Wieslander's lab (2013 - 2014)
Funded by an EMBO short-term fellowship
 

Past lab members


Niki Christopoulou
Darwin Trust PhD student (2019 - 2024)
Worked on RBPs and antibiotic resistance!
Now working for a SynBio company in Edinburgh.
 
Pedro Arede Rei
MRC Research Assistant (2018 - 2023)
Gave massive support to the projects in the lab and co-authored three papers!
Now a research assistant in Little France.
 
Liangcui Chu
MRC Post-doctoral Research Associate (2018 - 2023)
Found hundreds of new RBPs in S. aureus!
Now a post-doc in Edinburgh focussing on bioinformatics.
 
Holly Kay (Gerben van Ooijen's lab) (2018 - 2022)
Mad about plants and UV cross-linking.
 
Agata Wawszczyk (David Gally's lab) (2017 - 2022)
Working on an awesome secretion system and learning all about RNA structure probing.
 
Pujitha Raja (Thamarai Dorai-Schneider's lab) (2018 - 2023)
UV cross-linking bugs that can cause nasty pneumonia!
 
Ivayla Ivanova 
MRC Post-doctoral Research Associate (2018 - present)
Loved post-transcriptional modifications and doing high-throughput sequencing studies.
Currently working as an editor at Developmental Cell.
 
Magnus Gwynne
School of Biological Sciences MSc student (2020 - 2021).
Is working with Hanne to develop new methods for fine-tuning heterologous gene expression in yeast!
Now PhD student in York studying non-coding RNAs.
 
Hanne Grosemans
Wellcome Trust BioMed-SynBio Technician (2019 - 2021)
Now senior research assistant in Utrecht, The Netherlands.
 
Stuart McKellar                            
Wellcome Trust PhD and MRC Post-doctoral Research Associate (2016-2020)
Was CLASHing with pathogenic bacteria.
Now post-doctoral researcher in Hannah Mischo's lab at the King's College in London.
 
Tove Widén
MSc student (2018-2019)
Worked on RNA-binding proteins in yeast and doing some Synthetic Biology!
 
Ira Iosub                               
Wellcome Trust PhD student (2014 - 2018)
Founds some very interesting ncRNAs connecting nutrient sensing and stress in E. coli!
Now post-doctoral researcher in Nick Luscombe's lab at the CRICK institute in London.
 
Alina Selega                            
Shared EPSRC PhD student with Guido Sanguinetti (2015 - 2017)
Did the hardcore mathematical modeling in the lab!
Now a Post-doctoral researcher in Canada!
 
Thomas Mourant
Biochemistry honours student (2018)
Was involved in setting up reporter assays in pathogenic bacteria.
He is now going to London to do an MSc!
 
BBSRC & Wellcome Trust post-doctoral fellow (2014 - 2016)
Is giving yeast and bacteria lots of UV!
Is a hardcore Slackware Linux fan!
Now Wellcome Trust Post-doctoral researcher in Liz Baynes’s lab.
 
Elena Burlacu                     
Wellcome Trust PhD student (2012 - 2016)
Was applying ChemModSeq to yeast RNPs!
Post-doctoral researcher in Torben Heick Jensen's lab in Aarhus, Denmark. Working on neuronal cells.
 
Jule Karen Nieken
ERASMUS student (2016 - 2017).
Worked together with Ira on sRNAs in E. coli
Now PhD student in Hiro Ohkura's lab
 
Erica de Leau                       
Wellcome Trust Research Associate (2014 - present)
Was learning how to generically manipulate yeast and how to make RNASeq libraries.
Now a technician in Justin Goodrich’s lab.
 
Christel Sirocchi                  
ERASMUS student (2014 - 2015)
Was doing amazing work at the bench with bacteria and produced tons of awesome code!
Another Linux fan! Is a co-author on a Nature Methods paper!
 
Ralph Hector                       
Wellcome Trust Research Associate (2011 - 2014)
Probed the dynamics of 40S Ribosome assembly...
He loved doing primer extensions..... could not get enough of them...
Now a senior post-doctoral researcher in Edinburgh.
 
Maarten Tuijtel                    
ERASMUS student (2013)
A physics student from Delft responsible for benchmarking the ChemModSeq pipeline... 
After his PhD in Leiden he came back to Edinburgh to take on the job as EM facility Manager.
 
Alina Zaplatina                    
ERASMUS  student (2012-2013)
Helped with probing the structure of the longest ncRNA in yeast...
Now PhD student in Cologne.
 
Matthew Pierce                   
Biotechnology honours student (2012)
Produced tons of >= 95% pure protein and got his first taste of cloning nightmares...
 
Stamatina Fragkogianni     
Bioinformatics Masters student (2012)
Made pyReadCounters 10x faster...
Did her PhD in Edinburgh and is now a Post-doctoral fellow!