Zena Hadjivasiliou
Project
I am a mathematician by training and I love solving equations, especially when they can help me understand beauty, complexity, and sometimes simplicity, in nature. In Marcos' lab I am working on growth control, the scaling of morphogen gradients during growth and developmental patterning.
Education/academic background
I did my undergraduate in Mathematics at the University of Cambridge and then moved to sunny California to do an MSc in Statistics at Stanford University. After a couple of years in California, I decided I miss the rain in the UK too much and moved to London to do a PhD in Mathematical Biology at UCL. My thesis focused on evolutionary biology, specifically the question of the evolution of mating types and sexual dimorphism. After my PhD I received an EPSRC Fellowship that funded me as a postdoc for two years. During this time I continued working on evolutionary biology (on questions like the evolution of mating types, mating type switching, germline evolution and the role of mitonuclear coadaptation in speciation). I also took advantage of the freedom my fellowship granted me to pursue my curiosity and interest in biophysics and pattern formation during development. This led to a collaborative project with Buzz Baum to study Notch-Delta mediated pattern formation and its coupling to developmental timing. You can have a look through my publications here or follow me on twitter here. I am currently funded by an HFSP Long Term Fellowship.