In order of joining the lab:

Lucia Prieto-Godino – Group Leader

Lucia obtained a B.A. from the Universidad Autonoma de Madrid in Spain, where she trained with Gonzalo Garcia de Polavieja. After a summer working on vision in box jellyfish in the lab of Dan Nilsson at Lund University in Sweden, she joined Michael Bate‘s group at the University of Cambridge, UK for her PhD, where she studied the embryonic development of the Drosophila olfactory system. For her postdoc she worked on the evolution of olfactory pathways  in Drosophila, in the lab of Richard Benton at the University of Lausanne, Switzerland. She has received multiple awards, including the FENS EJN Young Investigator Prize 2018 , the 2018 L’Oreal-UNESCO for women in science Fellowship, a 2021 Allen Institute Distinguished Investigator Award and a 2023 Vallee Award, among others. In addition to the lab work, Lucia founded and runs TReND (Teaching and Research in Natural Sciences for Development) in Africa, work for which she received the Passion in Science Award 2016.

Sinzi Pop – Postdoc

Sinzi studied Biochemistry for her undergrad at the Babeș-Bolyai University in Romania and went on to study Molecular Neuroscience for her MSc at the Graduate Training Center of Neuroscience at Eberhard Karls University of Tübingen in Germany. Inspired by her lab rotation with Andrea Wizenmann and her Master thesis with Thomas Euler and Timm Schubert, Sinzi pursued a PhD in Developmental Neurobiology with Darren Williams at King’s College London. For her postdoc, Sinzi will use two-photon volumetric calcium imaging to disentangle olfactory networks in D.melanogaster and compare them to other drosophilids. Combining her work with that of the other members of our team, she aspires to understand how structural and functional networks evolve.

Andrea Adden – Postdoc

Andrea obtained her Bachelor and Master degrees in Biology and Neuroscience from the University of Göttingen, Germany. She discovered her love of neuroethology in the lab of Martin Göpfert, where she worked on the aristal thermosensors of Drosophila melanogaster under the supervision of Bart Geurten. Inspired by a short research stay in Karin Norström’s group, she then joined the Heinze lab in the Lund Vision Group for her PhD studies. For the past five years, she has been exploring the neural networks that process sensory cues which guide the long-distance migration of the Bogong moth, Agrotis infusa. Following her interest in sensory processing, Andrea joined the Prieto-Godino lab to study the evolution of olfactory receptors in tse-tse flies (Glossinidae).

Jason Somers – Senior Lab Research Scientist

Jason completed his PhD in genetics at the University of Melbourne using the vinegar fly Drosophila melanogaster as a model to study novel insecticide resistance mechanism. His postdoctoral work in the lab of Professor Joerg Albert, at the UCL Ear Institute, centred on how sensory systems and environmental conditions can influence rhythmic behaviours in insects. Using both flies and mosquitoes he studied the link between circadian rhythms and mechanosensation using behavioural, biophysical and molecular techniques. His interest in insect sensory physiology and behaviour lead him to joining the lab as a senior research scientist to study how changes in olfactory systems across different fly species have changed their preferences for different hosts.

Juan Lugo Ramos – Postdoc

Juan studied Biology at the Universidad Nacional de Colombia, in Bogotá. His interest in evolution led him to join the Laboratory of Dr. Luis Fernando Cadavid in the same University, to obtain his Masters degree studying the molecular evolution of MHC class I in New World Primates. Continuing his career in evolution, he pursued his Doctorate at the Max Planck Institute for evolutionary biology in Plön, Germany. Under the supervision of Dr. Miriam Liedvogel, he studied bird migration from an evolutionary perspective using population genomics approaches, and from a functional perspective analysing chromatin accessibility and gene expression in specific areas of the brain in birds. The influence of the latter part of his Doctorate, bring him to join the laboratory of Neural circuits and evolution in April 2021. His aim is to combine evolution and neuroscience approaches to study the changes and adaptations of olfactory sensing circuits across Drosophila species.

Antonio Torres-Mendez – Postdoc

Antonio obtained a BSc in Biotechnology from the Universidad Pablo de Olavide in Seville and a MRes in Systems and Synthetic Biology from Imperial College London. For his PhD, he redirected his passion for genetic engineering to the study of genome evolution in animals in the Transcriptomics of development and evolution lab (https://www.transdevolab.com) at the Centre for Genomic Regulation in Barcelona. There, he worked on alternative splicing regulation in the brain, studying how neural microexons originated and evolved. In the lab, Antonio is working on two exciting projects, one on translational readthrough in the Drosophila brain, and the other on behavioural manipulation by baculoviruses in caterpillars.

Christoph Giez – Postdoc

Christoph earned his Bachelor’s degree in Biology and a Master’s degree in Molecular Biology and Evolution from the University of Kiel. During a research stay in Karen Guillemin‘s lab at the University of Oregon, he became intrigued by the Gut-Brain axis.To combine his interest in evolution with his fascination for the interaction between bacteria and neurons, Christoph joined Thomas Bosch’s group for his Master’s thesis and PhD. Here, he investigated the interaction of symbiotic bacteria with behaviour and the nervous system in the freshwater Cnidarian Hydra, exploring these interactions from various angles and identifying different routes of communication. While studying Hydra‘s nervous system, Christoph developed a deep interest in the evolution of the nervous system and neuronal circuits. Driven by a desire to mechanistically understand how neuronal circuits evolve and lead to species-specific behaviours, he joined the Prieto-Godino lab. with electrophysiology.

Alexi Mery – PhD student shared with Darren lab at Kings College

Alexi graduated from King’s College London with a BSc in Biomedical sciences. Following short lab placements with Renos Savva at Birkbeck and Faraz Mardakheh at the Barts Cancer Institute, he discovered a passion for biological research. During his studies, he also became fascinated by evolutionary neuroscience and developmental biology, which led him to do his bachelor’s thesis with Darren Williams in the Centre for Developmental Neurobiology. For his PhD in the lab, Alexi will be doing a joint project with Darren Williams looking at the organisation of gustatory circuits in Drosophila melanogaster using genetic, connectomic, behavioural and functional imaging approaches. 

Michaela Joyce – SLRS

Michaela completed her neuroscience PhD in Giorgio Gilestro’s laboratory at Imperial College London. During her doctorate, she studied sleep through the lens of evolution by investigating sleep behaviour and neurobiology across different species within the Drosophila genus. It was during this period that her interest in how synaptic and circuit level changes in the brain drive behaviour—and the role sleep plays in orchestrating effective behavioural output—started to grow. Now, working in the Prieto-Godino laboratory in collaboration with the Gilestro lab, Michaela is delving into the mechanistic underpinnings of the relationship between sleep and cognitive function within different Drosophila species.

Emelie Brodrick – Postdoc shared with Baden lab at Sussex

Emelie graduated from the University of Southampton with a degree in MSci Marine Biology. After several years working as an environmental consultant, she returned to biological research in 2016. Within the Ecology of Vision Lab at the University of Bristol, she completed a PhD in visual adaptations in fiddler crabs, supervised by Dr. Martin How and Prof. Nick Roberts. During this time, she developed a skill for electron microscopy and behavioural experiments. In 2020, Emelie joined the Prof. Gaspar Jekely’s group, then based at the University of Exeter. Here, she worked on deconstructing the neurobiology of light-sensing and decision-making by cnidarian nerve nets, using coral and anemone larva models. In 2025, Emelie began a new postdoc, split between the Prieto-Godino Lab and the Baden Lab at University of Sussex. The project will explore how anthropogenic environmental changes drive evolution of the sensory-nervous system in the crustacean Daphnia over relatively short time scales, using ancestral resurrected specimens from sediment cores. She is working on producing connectomic data for 2 or 3 individuals to compare neural adaptations to pristine and polluted lake conditions.

Zofia Ziolkowska – LRS

Zofia obtained her BSc in Biological Sciences at UCL where she developed a keen interest in evolutionary genetics and speciation. During her time at UCL she completed a dissertation project in the Greig lab where she studied Dobzhansky-Muller incompatibilities between the genomes of the Saccharomyces budding yeast species. She further developed her interest in evolutionary biology, this time in insects, during a summer internship in the Pomiankowski research group. There, her project focused on the effect of a X-linked selfish genetic element on the fertility of the stalk-eyed fly T. dalmanni. Zofia joined the lab in June 2023 and has since been working as a Laboratory Research Scientist. Her work focuses on the differences in behavioural phenotypes of closely related drosophilids, aiming to better understand the function and evolution of diverging neural networks.

Alejandra Godino Gimeno – SLRS

Alejandra completed her Bachelor of Science in Biology at the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid. In her dissertation, she compared the taxonomic, functional, and ecological diversity of butterflies in the Iberian Peninsula. She is a curious, open-minded, and multidisciplinary scientist who obtained her Master of Science degree at the Universidad de Barcelona, where she studied fish physiology, reproduction, pathology, and welfare. Alejandra has collaborated in various projects focusing on fish nutrition, epidemiology, and environmental conservation at Fundación Chile and the AquaBiotech Group. Later on, she pursued her PhD at the Fish Neurobehavior Lab at the Instituto de Acuicultura Torre de la Sal from the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC), under the supervision of José Miguel Cerdá-Reverter. Her research investigated the role of the melanocortin system in the regulation of circadian and behavioural mechanisms in zebrafish, employing molecular biology techniques alongside behavioural testing. During her PhD, she collaborated with Svante Winberg at Uppsala University on a study examining the impact of obesity on memory and anxiety, using zebrafish as a model organism. In 2025, she received the Extraordinary Thesis Award from the Universidad Politécnica de Valencia. Currently, Alejandra is working with Antonio Torres-Mendez in Prieto-Godino’s Lab on a project that addresses the mechanisms of baculovirus behavioural manipulation in their caterpillar hosts.