People

The lab brings together developmental biologists, geneticists, physicists, engineers and computational scientists. Everyone is expected to work across those boundaries.

James Briscoe

Principal Group Leader and Deputy Research Director

James Briscoe is a principal group leader and Deputy Research Director at the Francis Crick Institute. Following a PhD with Ian Kerr at the Imperial Cancer Research Fund, he trained with Thomas Jessell at Columbia University, first as a Human Frontiers Science Program Fellow and then as a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Fellow.

He established his group at the MRC National Institute for Medical Research in 2000. He was awarded the EMBO Gold Medal in 2008, became Editor-in-Chief of Development in 2018, and was elected a Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences and of the Royal Society in 2019. He was elected an International Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2023. In 2025 he was awarded the Jean Brachet Memorial Lecture by the International Society for Differentiation and in 2026 he was awarded the Waddington Medal by the British Society for Developmental Biology.

Crick profile · Google Scholar · ORCID · Development · james.briscoe@crick.ac.uk

Manuela Melchionda

Senior Laboratory Research Scientist

manuela.melchionda@crick.ac.uk

Despina Stamataki

Lab Manager

The speed of embryonic development varies between mammalian species. I am looking into the potential contributions of proteostasis and basic cell metabolism to developmental tempo.

despina.stamataki@crick.ac.uk

Dirk Benzinger

Postdoctoral Fellow

I use optogenetics to study how the dynamics of morphogen exposure and signalling shape cell fate decisions.

dirk.benzinger@crick.ac.uk

Giulia Boezio

Postdoctoral Fellow

I study lineage relationships in the developing human and chick spinal cord to understand how the diversity of neuronal cell types arises.

giulia.boezio@crick.ac.uk

Tom Frith

Postdoctoral Fellow

tom.frith@crick.ac.uk

Usha Kadiyala

Postdoctoral Fellow

I study how cells integrate signalling and mechanics to build tissues, with the goal of making morphogenesis predictable and controllable.

usha.kadiyala@crick.ac.uk

Google Scholar · LinkedIn

Vitalii Kleshchevnikov

Postdoctoral Fellow

Mechanistic AI/ML modelling towards a causal understanding of how the genome sequence and gene regulatory networks underpin the full set of cell types and transitions, enabling new therapies.

vitalii.kleshchevnikov@crick.ac.uk

Google Scholar · ORCID · GitHub · LinkedIn

Jorge Lazaro Farre

Postdoctoral Fellow

I study the control of developmental tempo using both marsupial and avian systems.

jorge.farre@crick.ac.uk

Google Scholar · ORCID · Bluesky

Eleftheria Parasyraki

Postdoctoral Fellow

I study how chromatin and epigenetics regulate neural cell fate decisions during spinal cord development.

eleftheria.parasyraki@crick.ac.uk

Google Scholar · ORCID · LinkedIn

Arthur Radley

Postdoctoral Fellow

Arthur's background is in computational and developmental biology. He develops information theoretics and protocols that separate biological signal from technical noise in high-dimensional data.

arthur.radley@crick.ac.uk

ORCID

Joao Silva

Postdoctoral Fellow

joao.silva@crick.ac.uk

Virginia Vanni

Postdoctoral Fellow

I study how morphogens in the developing neural tube interact to activate the gene regulatory network specifying discrete neural progenitor domains at the single-cell level.

virginia.vanni@crick.ac.uk

Google Scholar · ORCID · LinkedIn

Dimitris Volteras

Postdoctoral Fellow

I develop computational methods integrating machine learning and mathematical modelling to decode gene regulation and cell fate decisions.

dimitris.volteras@crick.ac.uk

Google Scholar · GitHub · Bluesky · LinkedIn

Hilary Knowles

PhD Student

hilary.knowles@crick.ac.uk

Sujay Raj

PhD Student

I study how cells differentially respond to signals in a developing embryo, to understand how signalling information is processed at the level of gene regulation.

sujay.raj@crick.ac.uk

People who have left the lab →