News

L-R – Carolin Kobras, Aakash G. Mukhopadhyay, Rebecca Smith

Carolin Kobras (Stracy lab)
Carolin has recently joined the University of Birmingham as Assistant Professor in Bacterial Genomics. Her group will focus on antibiotic tolerance and resistance, investigating how bacteria adapt to and survive antibiotic treatment. Using molecular microbiology, genomics, and evolutionary approaches, her group aims to uncover the genetic basis of these processes and develop new strategies to overcome them, improve diagnostics, and advance antimicrobial therapies.

Aakash G. Mukhopadhyay (Roberts Lab)

Aakash will join the University of Cambridge in June. His group will investigate how eukaryotic pathogens have repurposed conserved organelles known as cilia to move, sense, and adapt to different environments. Using a combination of structural and cell biology approaches, his group aims to understand how cellular systems are diversified in parasites and identify pathogen-specific vulnerabilities for the development of new therapies against infectious diseases.

Rebecca Smith (Ivan Ahel’s group)

Rebecca will be starting her group in July 2026 at St Vincent’s Institute of Medical Research in Melbourne, Australia. With support from the Cancer Council Victoria with a mid-career Cancer Research Fellowship, she will continue her work on ADP-ribosylation in DNA repair. In particular, her group will investigate how novel modulators of ADP-ribosylation can affect the cellular response to PARP inhibitors, an important class of cancer therapies.

We are committed to providing a launch pad for the careers of our postdocs and research staff.  Find out more about the Dunn School Postdoc Programme.