Team | BNL Lund

Andreas Heuer

Assistant Professor in Neuroscience

Scopus ID: 37121979900

Researchgate: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Andreas_Heuer

Andreas Heuer Behavioural Neuroscience Laboratory Lund University

TEAM

Andreas studied Psychology (BSc) at the University of Maastricht, the Netherlands and Flinders University, Adelaide, Australia. After obtaining a MSc in Neuropsychology at Maastricht University, Andreas conducted his doctoral research at Cardiff University in the Brain Repair Group under the tutelage of Steve Dunnett and Anne Rosser where he used simple and complex behavioural tasks to assess lesion-induced deficits and graft-induced behavioural recovery in a rodent model of Parkinson's disease. Andreas has conducted two post-doctoral periods at Lund University, with Malin Parmar (working on the preclinical assessment of dopaminergic human ES cell grafts) and Martin Lundblad (working on the detection of Dopamine release from transplants) from 2013-2016 , and Tomas Björklund (using chemogenetics to manipulate cell activity) from 2016-2018 focussing on the selective and reversible modulation of cell activity using chemogenetics.

Andreas was awarded a post-doc stipend by the Swedish Society for Medical Research (SSMF) and subsequently an establishing grant by the Swedish Research Council (VR) to start his independent research group in June 2018 focusing on brain-behaviour relationships and disase modelling.

Francesco Gubinelli

Post doctoral researcher

Scopus ID: 57213690991

Researchgate: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Francesco_Gubinelli

Francesco got his Undergraduate degree in Applied Clinical Psychology and Medicine in University of Rome - La Sapienza working on Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). He completed a MSc in Molecular Biotechnology at Jagiellonian University, Kraków - Poland working on stem cells derived extracellular vesicles (EVs) for cardiac regeneration.

In December 2019 he obtained his PhD in Neuroscience within the CEA-MIRCen laboratory of Paris-Saclay University, Paris – France, under the EU Marie Sklodowska-Curie Action fellowship for early stage researchers; in this framework, Francesco worked on the in vivo characterization of an injectable in situ polymerizing collagen hydrogel system for enhancing cells therapy in Parkinson’s disease. In addition, Francesco also investigated the neurotoxic relationship between two protein known to be crucial in the development and progression of Parkinson’s disease – alpha synuclein and LRRK2.

Francesco joined BNL in February 2020 for his post-doctoral research project. He will focus on the characterization of our novel AAV-vector based preclinical rodent model of Parkinson's disease, using behavioural, electrochemical and optogenetic techniques.

To know more about Francesco’s research, click here.

Matilde Negrini

PhD student

Scopus: 57201472074

Researchgate: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Matilde_Negrini

Matilde has studied Biotechnology at the University of Padua (Italy). Then she has completed her Master degree in Cellular and Molecular Biotechnology at the University of Trento (Italy) and the practical part as a research placement at Lund University (Sweden), in the Translational Neurogenetics Group. She has since completed the preparatory PhD course "Human Biology" financed by a grant form the Parkinsonsfonden. Matilde's project involves the generation and characterisation of a novel alpha-synuclein overexpression model of Parkinson's disaese.

In August 2018 Matilde started her doctoral studies on the assessment of non-motor deficits in a novel alpha-synuclein overexpression model. Her current projects involve the use of molecular biology, AAV vector production, complex behavioural testing, electrochemical recordings and opto/chemogenetics.

Sarah Malandra

Guest researcher

Sarah has studied Medical Biotechnolgy at the University of Catania in Italy . After completing a research internship for her MSc thesis project at the Basal Ganglia Laboratory at Lund University where she studied the role of D2 receptors in teh genesis of L-Dopa-induced dyskinesias. Sarah has been awareded a prestigious scholership from the CM Lerici Foundation to join BNL for a duration fo 6 month. Sarah will use optogenetics and electrochemistry to dissect the woring for primary fetal tissue grafts in a preclinical rodent model of Parkinson's disease.

Giovanna Cazzolla

MSc student (University of Bari, Italy)

Giovanna is currently studying Medical Biotechnology and Molecular Medicine at the University of Bari. She has joined us for her MSc research internship to work on histopathological changes after an AAV alphasynucelin overexpression in the midbrain of rodents.

Nuran Caz

MSc student (University of Hasselt, Belgium)

Nuran is studying Biomedical Sciences at Hasset University, with a specialization in Molecular Mechanisms in Health and Disease. Nuran wants to pursue a career in Neuroscience and is particularly interested in Brain-behaviour functions. Nurans MSc research internship will use optogenetics to probe the function of dopamine fetal tissue grafts using electrochemistry and behaviour.

Swantje Hauser

BSc Student (Vienna University, Austria)

Swantje is joining the BNL in January 2020. She will be working on the development of viral vectors for gene therapy. Her focus will be on investigation into the immune response after injection of AAV vectors into the midbrain as part of her BSc degree. Swantje is joined supervised by BNL and Marcus Davidsson at Barrow Neurological Institute, Phoenix, USA.

Iva Pavicic

MSc Student (University of Rijeka, Croatia)

Iva is studying Drug research and development at the University of Rijeka in Croatia. Iva will work on a project capturing neuronal ensembles and investigate cell diversity in midbrain dopamine neurons.

Cecile is studying psychology at the Free University of Brussels in Belgium and has joined BNL in May 2021 to conduct her research internship. Cecile will work on the immunohistological characteisation of a preclinical rodent model of PD.

Cecile Adant

MSc Student (University of Brussels, Belgium)

Nayomi is our honorary lab member since August 2020. Nayomi is currently attending the 6th grade of the 2020/21 school year and she is very excited about all things related to science. According to her teacher Claris Monica Diaz (DiazDoesScience), Nayomi has a brilliant carrer in STEM ahead of her. We are looking forward to welcome her to the laboratory in person, once she has graduated.

Nayomi Shih

Discovery Charter School, 6th grade (California, USA)

Previous lab members:

Manuela Rizzi

ERASMUS training

Trento University, Italy

Celeste Tahershamsi

Medical exchange student

Canada

Armelle Gesnik

MSc student

CPE Lyon, France

Christine Wang

Medical exchange student

Canada

Giuseppe Tomasello

MSc student

Catania University, IT

David von Rosen

BSc student (Medical Program)

Lund University

Klara Esbo

BSc student (Biomedical Program)

Lund University

Luca Cimino

MSc student

Trento University, Italy

Naomi King

MSc student

Nottingham University, UK

Anita Mehrdadian

Project student

Lund University

Tommie Ros

MSc student

Maastricht University, NL

Wilson Stewart-Murray

MSc student

Keele University, UK

Ida Kulacz

Erasmus+ student

Wroclaw University, Poland

(Lab)life

New objective, camera and condenser-rings arrived today :-)

DIS student (virtual) visit. First outreach activity of the year :)

Goodbye Giuseppe and merry christmas

Tough day of writing ;-)

Next generation of BNLers taking over histology

Paper celebration! Thanks to all co-authors for their efforts!

NECTAR conference 2020 - Francesco presenting his work in a Datablitz and Pizza conference dinner :-)

Some impressions from our 2020 Labretreat in Småland

Our residence: The Davidssons Family summer house

Cannoeing and BBQ-lunch

Smålands dinner: Kroppkakor + Crayfish and 5h game of Catan.

Early commitment to LU :-)

Anita bringing gifts from Greece :-)

New BNL labcoats

Christmas came early this year!!! Many thanks to Steve Marsh from Marshdesigns for two acrylic rodent cages for our optogenetic and electrochemistry studies.

Very happy with our new RaspberryPi HQ 12MP colour camera, which is now hooked up to our microscope. Many thanks to the OpenFlexure Team for providing all the code on Github for free.

First protocol published from the lab! Well done Mati and Marcus!

Our new Leica inverted DMi8 is all set up. Thanks to Peter for being amazing from start to finish as well as the Crafoord foundation for supporting our research and making this possible.