People

Kewin joined the group of Professor Patrick Cai in 2019 as a postdoctoral research associate. He performed his PhD at the University Aix-Marseille, France, under the supervision of Prof. Jean-Paul Bourdineaud and Dr. Christelle Adam-Guillermin, aiming at integrating the epigenetic response in the field of radioecotoxicology. He then joined in 2017 the research team lead by Dr. Jean-Paul di Rago, France, to work on the nuclear relocation of mitochondrial genes in the budding yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae.
His current research aims at implementing a fully synthetic, size-reduced and functional mitochondrial genome in S. cerevisiae by removing the presumably non-essential inter- and intragenic sequences, representing more than 80% of the mitochondrial genome size. Kewin truly believes that mitochondria play a central role in eukaryotic cell’s adaptive capabilities and evolution.
In his spare time, Kewin enjoys learning about psychology, playing guitar and cooking.

Mark joined the Cai Lab in 2022 as a computational post-doc. He completed his PhD at Queen’s University Belfast, under the supervision of Professor Paulo Prodohl, which entailed a Population Genomics approach to managing European oyster populations. Mark’s interests are in computational tools to assist the design-build-test-learn cycles of synthetic biology and genomics projects. Mark enjoys cycling, reading and watching science-fiction.

Ravi joined the group of Professor Patrick Cai in 2023 as a postdoctoral research associate. He finished his PhD from University of Aberdeen, UK under the supervision of Professor Ian Stansfield, working on transcriptional regulation of tRNAs and translational elongation factor EEF2A in Saccharomyces Cerevisiae. He then joined the lab of Dr. Yulia Yuzenkova in 2021 as a postdoctoral research associate at Centre for Bacterial Cell Biology, Newcastle University where he worked on NAD+ capped RNA in E.coli and its role in regulating transcriptional and translational efficiency. His current research aims at engineering of human artificial chromosomes and application of tRNA neochromosomes in regulating translational efficiency. In his free time, he likes capturing moments and places through photography.