Professor David Lomas was the former director of the UCL Wellcome Trust PhD programme for Clinicians. He provides bedside teaching for medical students on the Respiratory Unit of UCLH.
Professor David Sattelle is a Graduate Tutor within the Division of Medicine.
The Centre for Respiratory Biology provides high-quality research projects within a world-class facility to undergraduate and postgraduate science students led by an experienced and supportive team of researchers.
PhD Research degrees
CRB has an active and established history of providing high quality training in a variety of fundamental and cutting edge techniques for science graduates. Within this group, students have the use of our first class facilities, as well as access to facilities at the ISMB and the Francis Crick Institute ( ). Past students have taken up careers in a range of areas including academic and pharmaceutical research, medical writing, consultancy and research administration
Positions for science graduates are funded by CASE awards, grants from the major funding agencies (MRC, BBSRC), charities (Wellcome, Rosetrees Trust) and UCL graduate schemes. These PhD positions are advertised externally (jobs.ac.uk).
Current PhD students
Kamila Kamuda -
Ibrahim Aldobiyan -
Marina Nick -
Recent PhD graduates
Alistair Jagger - Biophysical characterisation of structural dynamics in wild type and disease causing mutants of Alpha-1 antitrypsin using NMR approaches
Emma Elliston - Biochemical and Structural Characterisation of Pathological Alpha1-Antitrypsin polymers
Anwen Brown - Development of high-throughput screening methods and their application to a C. elegans model of alpha-1 antitrypsin deficiency.
Undergraduate and postgraduate taught degrees
Members of the Centre provide supervision for highly motivated students on BSc and Masters teaching programmes within the Divisions of Medicine and Biosciences. These projects often lead to publications: Motamedi-Shah et al., Biochem J. (2016) 473(19): 3269–3290; Jagger et al., Eur. Biophys. J Biophys. Lett. (2017) 46: S239-S239 Supp: 1 Abs: P-481.
Every project involves training and use of an array of different techniques such as:
- Molecular biology for the creation of mutant proteins in order to determine the mechanism of serpin polymerisation
- Mammalian or E. coli cell culture
- Protein separation and visualisation by FPLC, gel electrophoresis and western blot analysis
- Assays to determine: levels of specific proteins in patient samples, conformation, polymerisation, thermal stability, inhibitory activity, residue protection to determine steric hindrances, complex stability
- Protein crystallization and molecular modelling
- Immunofluoresence and microscopy
- Spectroscopic methods
- RNAi screening of model organisms
- Creation of a disease model organism using C. elegans
- High through put drug screens to identify new classes of drugs against a human disease e.g. malaria, amyloidosis or an invertebrate pest
Students wishing to undertake their project in the Centre should initially contact the Principal Investigator or Research Associate whose research area is of most interest to you.
The main Divisional teaching page provides further information on courses offered:
“UCL’s cutting edge new MSc in Respiratory Clinical Science has been designed for those who seek to lead the way in the growing field of Respiratory Medicine – as clinicians or as scientists. This MSc will focus on the study of the scientific and clinical basis of Respiratory diseases with all courses and modules directed towards understanding disease and the effects on patients. To learn more about this programme click here.“
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