Dr Adele Connor
Adele received a 1st class honours degree in Biology and Chemistry from Maynooth University in 2014, with an international year spent at York University in Toronto, Canada. She then completed a one year MSc in Biomedical Science at Ulster University in 2015. Adele joined UCD and worked as a Research Assistant for two years in Assoc. Prof. Antoinette Perry’s lab where she focused on the epiCaPture project. Adele was awarded an Irish Cancer Society Scholarship in 2020 to carry out a PhD project entitled - ‘Investigating the heterogeneic biology of ovarian cancer metastasis using high resolution imaging to inform novel combination therapies’. Adele began her PhD in January 2021, supervised by Assoc. Prof. Antoinette Perry (UCD), Prof. Jeremy Simpson (UCD) and Assoc. Prof. Joanne Lysaght (TCD) and in collaboration with Prof. Donal Brennan (Mater Misericordiae University Hospital). Adele was nominated for the Irish Cancer Society’s PhD Scholar of the year in 2023, and has presented her work at conferences in Ireland, Italy and America. Adele is an active member of the Irish Network of Gynaecological Oncology, and was involved in the successful application to the Irish Cancer Society’s Public and Patient Involvement Award 2022 for a project entitled ‘Broadening Patient Involvement in Ovarian Cancer Research’. Adele received her PhD in June 2025.
Dr Margaritha Mysior
Margaritha completed her Bachelor and Master degrees in Molecular Biology at the Westphalian University of Applied Sciences in Recklinghausen, Germany. She undertook her Master thesis work in the laboratory of Prof. Jeremy Simpson in UCD from October 2016 to August 2017. During this time, she characterised five novel proteins involved in the regulation of the Golgi-to-ER retrograde pathway in mammalian cells. She completed her PhD in Prof. Simpson’s laboratory in 2022, developing a three-dimensional (3D) cell model (spheroids) to investigate membrane trafficking events. A component of this work was undertaking a comparative study with a conventional two-dimensional (2D) monolayer cell model. Margaritha worked as a research scientist in the laboratory for 2 years continuing her research on how membrane trafficking events are regulated in spheroids. Margaritha was awarded an Irish Research Council Postdoctoral fellowship in 2023 to continue her research on membrane trafficking events in cells growing in a 3D context.
Dr Sofia Parisi
Sofia has a Bachelor’s degree in Natural Sciences from the University of Palermo in Sicily, and a Master’s degree in Genetics and Molecular Biology from the Sapienza University of Rome, Italy. She was awarded an Irish Research Council fellowship in 2019, enabling her to move to Dublin and carry out her PhD studies in the lab of Prof. Simpson. Sofia received her PhD in 2023. Her research focused on small GTP binding proteins of the Rab family. These proteins play essential roles in the organisation of cellular organelles and the trafficking pathways that operate between them. Recently it has been found that mutations in the gene encoding for Rab33B are responsible for a hereditary skeletal dysplasia called Smith-McCort dysplasia. The aim of her project was to characterise the Rab33B protein, to better understand its role in healthy cells and what goes wrong in cells that contain the mutated versions.
Dr Alannah Chalkley
Alannah received her undergraduate degree in Cell and Molecular Biology from UCD in 2019. She was awarded Irish Research Council funding in 2019 to carry out her PhD, which she completed in 2024. Her research focused on how nanoparticles (NPs) are internalised and trafficked through cells when they grow as 3D spheroids. This project aimed to provide the first molecular understanding of the mechanisms by which NPs , as potential drug delivery vehicles, penetrate into solid tumours, using in vitro grown cellular spheroids as a model system.