Ruben Perez-Carrasco is a researcher who is passionate about understanding the basic dynamical rules of life by working in the interface of Biology, Mathematics, and Physics. He earned his PhD in Physics on the “Mechano-chemical study of rotatory molecular Motors” at the University of Barcelona in 2013, before moving to the Mathematics Department at University College London to employ tools from stochastic dynamical systems theory to explore the principles of timing in cellular transitions during embryonic development and synthetic biology. In 2017, he became an independent researcher as a Clifford Fellow at UCL. Since 2020, he is a lecturer in theoretical systems biology in the Department of Life Sciences at Imperial College London where his group studies how the timing and precision of cellular decisions are controlled from molecules to tissues, focusing in problems of developmental and synthetic biology.
When he is not in the office you might find him playing the clarinet with the Bloomsbury Woodwind Ensemble. In his free time, he also enjoys sketching around London.
Charlotte Manser is a PhD student in the group with a passion for applying mathematical tools to solve complex biological problems. After completing an undergraduate degree in mathematics at Cambridge University in 2020, she went on to pursue a master’s degree in Systems Biology at the same institution, which she completed in 2021. Currently, she is investigating the mechanisms behind how different species undergo the same processes at different speeds, despite having evolutionarily conserved genetic programs. Leveraging her background in mathematics, Charlotte is taking a theoretical approach to her research, using dynamical systems to solve this complex problem, shedding light on this fundamental biological question and contribute to our understanding of the mechanisms underlying life itself.