Zhen Sun

MSc Student (2020)

Zhen joined the team in 2020 and is mainly responsible for organizing systematic review on cell lines, phenotypes and culture conditions of human distal convoluted tubules to lay the foundation for subsequent experiments. Even though the COVID-19 pandemic was very painful, he still felt that his days in the laboratory were very happy and meaningful.

Olivia McKnight

iBSC student (2022)

Olivia is a medical student with an interest in interventional radiology who joined this group during her iBSc in Medical Physics (1st ). Her research project focused on collecting data via micro-CT to investigate potential differences in bone microstructure between mice models with Gitelman's or Gordon's Syndrome.

LinkedIn : Olivia McKnight

Mingdong Liu

MSc Student (2023)

Mingdong obtained his Bachelor's degree in Biomedical Engineering from Northeastern University in China. Subsequently, he pursued further studies at University College London, where he enrolled in the MSc Advanced Biomedical Imaging program. Joining the research group in March 2023, he is responsible for the labeling of kidney images and the deep learning algorithm research for 3D kidney segmentation, encompassing tubules, glomeruli, and vessels. His goal is to contribute to the development of a faster and more accurate algorithm for 3D kidney segmentation. The research project has been nominated for a Dean's Research Prize.

Twitter: @MDLiuAndrew

LinkedIn: Mingdong Liu

Yining Sun

MSc Student (2023)

Yining joined the lab as a MSc student. She did a BSc in Medical Biochemistry from University of Manchester and worked as a research assistant. During her taught master degree, she did a research project on analysing the spatial transcriptomics data post-spatial radiation, aiming to understand how different spatial radiation sources affects the mouse kidney differently.

Jianhua (Ace) Gu

MSc Student (2023)

Ace is an alumnus of Guangzhou Medical University, where he earned his Bachelor's degree in Clinical Medicine. After graduation, he embarked on a career as a medical imaging diagnostician, gaining invaluable frontline clinical experience over several years. His pursuit of advanced academic research led him to become an MSc student at University College London (UCL), where he joined this research group. During his six-month research project in the group, he focused on four novel hDCT (human distal convoluted tubule) cell lines that lack detailed characterization. Employing proteomic techniques, he comprehensively analyzed these cell lines to verify their DCT origins.

Yifan Zhu

MSc Student (2024)

Yifan completed the BSc of Biochemistry in the Faculty of Biology, Medicine and Health at the University of Manchester. He is currently an MSc student affiliated with University College London (UCL) of Medicine, specializing in Advanced Biomedical Imaging. For his 6-month research project in the group, he focuses on creating immortalized cell lines from patient-derived kidney cells for studying rare monogenic kidney diseases, using urine samples and advanced cell culture techniques.

Muhammed Furkan Karadag, MD

MSc Student (2024)

Furkan completed his medical education in Istanbul. Now, he is doing Precision Medicine MSc, at University College London (UCL). He worked in an A&E department in Istanbul for a year and had medical technology start-up experience. He is now working on AI-assisted segmentation of kidney biopsy images. He is interested in applying technology/AI solutions in medicine (especially to be able to understand his own handwriting on prescriptions). Medical Language Hub, is an application he programmed and made available on Play and App Stores. The app focuses on teaching medical terminology to refugees and immigrants in their host country to help reduce the language barrier in healthcare settings.

Danika Mensah

MSc Student (2024)

Danika completed a BSc in Biochemistry at the University of Kent, receiving a First-Class Honours. During her time in the laboratory, she will be conducting research entitled “Maximising Collection of Living Kidney Cells from Patients with Rare Genetic Disorders for Research”

LinkedIn: Danika Mensah

Talha Raza

Medical Student (Acamedic 2024)

Talha is a 5th year medical student at UCL. He has a passion for academic research and is excited to work in the laboratory environment to discover the complexities of renal microanatomy. In his free time, he enjoys going to the gym and practicing martial arts and is an avid enjoyer of travelling.

Nidhi Rege

Medical Student (Acamedic 2024)

Nidhi is a medical student at University College London with research experience and interest in Renal Medicine and Rheumatology and Health Policy . She has completed research projects on the role of science advisory teams in the initial UK Covid-19 response and the role of ethnicity, sex and age in the treatment and prognosis of SLE. She is currently working on annotating 3D imaging data of kidney tissue for analysis using VR and high resolution displays.

Alaa Algethmi

MSc Student (2024)

Alaa is currently doing her master's in clinical and public health nutrition at UCL, previously she completed her bachelor’s in pharmacology and molecular genetics at King’s college London. She is excited to be joining our team at LTC.

Brenda Vescance Caroprese

MSc Student (2024)

Brenda completed her medical sciences degree at the University of Exeter. She is currently pursuing a Master's in Precision Medicine at University College London and is very excited to join the London Tubular Centre for her research project. Her work focuses on the annotation of high-resolution HiP-CT 3D images of human kidney to label kidney microarchitecture with the aim to train a supervised Machine Learning algorithm.