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| 4 Sep 2025 | |
| Alumni Spotlight |
I completed my undergraduate studies at the University of Bath - which allows you to take a year outside of your studies between your second and third year. I worked in the target validation team at GSK, and this is what made me sure I wanted to pursue a PhD. It was also through this placement that I met my PhD supervisor.
I started my PhD in 2013 (when the Crick was still NIMR..) and left in 2018. When we began the project we wanted to investigate long term changes in the lung after influenza infection - and finished the project looking at the ontogeny of macrophages. It was a very exciting development to the project, and we eventually published this in Nature Immunology in 2020.
I left the Crick for a post-doc position with Bart Lambrecht at the University of Gent-VIB in 2018. As part of my post-doc I got the opportunity to go and work at UCSF in San Francisco for a few months (luckily before COVID!). This is where we got interested in mucus - and now I work on a very collaborative project - taking mucus samples from asthmatic patients with the help of clinicians, running mouse models of disease - and developing antibodies with a company.
The Crick is a great place to do your PhD - i found it a very collaborative and science-focused environment. This has definitely helped me reach out to the collaborators which are essential to the project now - and see the benefit of working as one big team.
My advice for anyone would be to just start talking to people! Tell people your scientific problems, ambitions - and you never know when a solution is just around the corner.
Helena has recently been selected for the New Scientist "Talent in Science" competition in the Netherlands and Belgium. Register your vote for her work here: https://www.newscientist.nl/polls/new-scientist-wetenschapstalent-2025/
Also check out this video explaining Helena's research (to a snail!) in this short video
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