Associate Professor Caroline Beck (Principal Investigator)
Caroline studied at Birmingham University in the UK (Biochemistry BSc honours) before taking up a PhD with Prof Hugh Woodland at Warwick in 1992. After completing her PhD "Investigation of the effect of Wild type and mutant NF-kB related proteins on mesoderm induction in Xenopus" she began work as a postdoc in Prof Jonathan Slack's lab at the University of Bath, where she worked on tailbud development, gamma-secretases (briefly), transgenic techniques and tail regeneration. Caroline moved to New Zealand in 2004 to start her own lab at University of Otago. She teaches Genetics and Zoology and was Director of Genetics from mid 2017 to the end of 2020. She enjoys all aspects of the PI role apart from paperwork. Caroline is a member of Genetics Otago and the Brain Health Research Centre.
Joanna Ward (Molecular Biology Technician)
Jo brings a wide range of molecular skills to the lab as well as helping to keep things running smoothly. She also has a talent for in situ hybridisation. Jo also supports several other research teams in Zoology.
Dr Phoebe Chapman (Postdoctoral Researcher, Marsden)
Phoebe joined the lab in August 2020, originally working from Queensland, Australia due to pandemic border issues. She relocated to Otago in March 2021. She has a BSc Hons and PhD from the University of Queensland, where she worked on parasitic diseases in sea turtles.
Phoebe is a member of Genetics Otago and uses molecular genetic and bioinformatic approaches to ask interesting questions about the tadpole microbiome origins and to investigate whether the skin microbiome can influence regenerative success.
Dr Sandesh Panthi (ARF, Neurological Foundation)
Sandesh is ARF on our Neurological Foundation funded project, developing new pre-clinical models for DEE (developmental and epileptic encephalopathy). Originally from Nepal, Sandesh found his way to Dunedin via South Korea. His PhD work in the Department of Anatomy also focussed on epilepsy.
He uses molecular genetics, behavioural analysis software and electrophysiology in our tadpole models to replicate human variants that associate with DEE. Sandesh is also a member of the Brain Health Research Centre and Genetics Otago.
Dr Rob Day, Postdoctoral Research Fellow
Rob is a talented and innovative researcher with an interest in developing boutique sequencing solutions for difficult problems. He undertook a MPhil in Biology and Biochemistry at the University of Bath, then relocated to Otago in 2004 to do a PhD with Prof Richard Macknight, in the Department of Biochemistry.
Rob is associate investigator on our Marsden funded tadpole microbiome study, and has recently been awarded an MBIE Smart Ideas Grant with Dr Augustine Chen.
Sulagna Banerjee (PhD candidate)
Sulagna is from Kolkata in India and has an MSc in Medical Genetics from University of Glasgow (Scotland). She started her PhD in February 2018 is using a new model of intractable epilepsy to test anti inflammatory compounds for their ability to reduce seizure activity. Her work involves CRISPR/Cas9 editing of DEE genes in tadpoles, behavioural analysis, drug testing and electrophysiology.
Sulagna's research is co-supervised by Dr. Paul Szyszka who joined the Department of Zoology in 2019.
Recent past lab members
Dan Hudson (Research Assistant 2020-2021)
Dan is a microbiologist, programmer and R guru who enjoys messing about with big (or small) data. He has a masters degree and worked at ESR before joining the Morgan lab in 2019 as an RA. Dan assisted with groundwork on the Marsden Microbiome project from mid 2020 to the end of 2021 and most recently published the complete genomes of three novel bacteria isolated from Xenopus skin (Hudson et al 2021). More papers featuring his work are expected to emerge in 2022!
Campbell Gilbert (MSc Genetics 2019-2021)
Campbell is an Otago Genetics BSc major, and joined the lab in 2019, completing his MSc "Microbial master manipulators of mending" with distinction in June 2021. He is currently deciding his next move.
Campbell's research focussed on the link between Gram negative bacteria, Toll-like receptors and regenerative outcome, following on from the work of Thomas Bishop and Thomas Devine.
Campbell was co-supervised by Dr. Xochitl Morgan, in the department of Microbiology and Immunology.
Prashath Karunaraj (PhD 2017-2021)
Prashath is from Sri Lanka and joined the lab in late 2017. He has a BSc degree from in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology from the University of Colombo (Sri Lanka) and a MSc in Biotechnology from South Asian University (India), and now a PhD from Otago University, confirmed in September 2021!
His PhD research was co-supervised by Prof. Peter Dearden In Biochemistry, and his thesis is entitled "Functional analysis of pea aphid noggin-like genes".
Prashath is in USA to pursuing postdoctoral research using Drosophila with Cathie Pfleger at Mount Sinai School of Medicine, in New York.
Matt Reily-Bell (MSc Genetics 2020)
Matt's masters was co-supervised by Dr. Louise Bicknell in Pathology. His dissertation investigated the role of RECQL4 in genetic disease, using CRISPR/Cas9 in Xenopus. Matt also completed a summer studentship from the Otago Medical Research Foundation, developing imaging technology and behavioural analysis for our epilepsy model, in summer 2017/2018. Matt is now doing his PhD, also at Otago University, in the Department of Physiology.
Fernando Miguez (PgDipSci Genetics 2020)
Fernando joined the lab in mid 2017 after majoring in Linguistics (BA) and Genetics (BSc), with a minor in Japanese, and his research focused on spinal cord regeneration.
Dr Tyler McInnes (ARF 2018)
Tyler joined us part time in 2018 to help with some nutty bioinformatics tasks. He is now a full time Teaching Fellow with the Genetics Teaching Programme.
Thomas Devine (BSc Hons, Microbiology 2018)
Tom completed his honours research with Dr. Xochitl Morgan in Microbiology, co-supervised by Caroline. Tom's project aimed to link the microbiome to regeneration success in tadpoles, using next generation sequencing and analysis.
Tom has since gone on to work for the Ministry of Health as an advisor for the Government's Covid response team, now studying towards a Masters of Public Health at Columbia University, in New York City, USA. Tom was the recipient of a 2020 Fulbright Science and Innovation Scholarship and a Gordon Watson Scholarship, and was recognised for his leadership and mentorship excellence at the Otago Young Alumni Awards. He also won a William Georgetti Scholarship in 2021.
Dr Thomas Bishop (PhD Genetics, 2014-2018)
Tom did his undergraduate study in Biochemistry at Otago University and an Honours project with Prof. Iain Lamont. Tom then joined the Beck lab to pursue his PhD, in which he made some great progress towards understanding how regeneration is regulated by pathways that link wound response, inflammation, apoptosis and cell cycle. You can read some of Tom's work in preprint form at BioRXiv here.
Tom also spent 7 months in Florida working with Profs Malcolm Maden and Paul Reier, where he applied his Xenopus findings to mammalian regeneration models. He is now a postdoc at University of California!
A list of other recent past lab members can be found here