Scientific committee
Michał Ślęzak, PhD – Head of the Laboratory of Astrocyte Biology at Łukasiewicz – PORT from October 2020
He received the PhD at the Louis Pasteur University in Strasbourg and accomplished postdoctoral training in Inst. Pharmacology PAS in Cracow (Young Investigator Award, Polish MSHE) and in VIB, KU Leuven (Marie-Curie Intra-European Fellowship). In 2016, he won a prestigious competition at BioMed X Institute to lead a team sponsored by Boehringer Ingelheim. The team led by Ślęzak, PhD, focuses on the role of astrocytes in brain physiology and pathology.
“In recent years, we discovered aberrations in the molecular program of astrocytes elicited by chronic stress in rodents. Likewise, the transcritpional analysis of post-mortem human brain samples provided evidence for the impairment of fundamental functions of astrocytes in depression. Currently, the team combines genetic manipulations with state-of-the-art functional imaging to investigate the contribution of astrocyte-specific pathways to neurobiological symptoms of psychiatric diseases”.
Witold Konopka, PhD – Head of the Laboratory of Neuroplasticity and Metabolism at Łukasiewicz – PORT from March 2021
He received the PhD at Nencki Institute in Warsaw and accomplished postdoctoral training at German Cancer Research Center (DKFZ), Heidelberg (Guenther Schuetz lab). From 2012 he ran the Laboratory of Animal Models and in 2014-2018 he was a deputy director for scientific affairs at the Nencki Institute.
“In the PORT Research Group, we study the precise mechanisms that regulate peripheral metabolism by the brain. We focus on regulation of eating – especially the feeling of hunger and satiety. We are interested in how neurons modify their activity in response to both internal and external signals, informing the brain of such physiological states. Understanding these phenomena will help in the fight against eating disorders such as anorexia and the pandemic of the modern world – obesity”.
Tomasz Prószyński, PhD – Head of the Laboratory of Synaptogenesis at Łukasiewicz – PORT from February 2020
He received the PhD at the Max Planck Institute in Dresden (Kai Simons’ lab) and accomplished postdoctoral training at Harvard University (Joshua Sanes’ lab). In 2013-2020, he was leading a Laboratory of Synaptogenesis at the Nencki Institute where he was a member of the Scientific Council for two cadencies. Co-organizer of European Muscle Conference, Neurons in Action, and „Actin and actin-binding proteins in health and diseases 2022”. His recent publication (Rojek K. et al., Plos Biology 2019) has been awarded the Konorski Award for the best publication in neuroscience performed predominantly in Poland.
“Laboratory of Synaptogenesis studies molecular mechanisms that regulate neuromuscular junctions in the peripheral nervous system as well as synapses and neuronal organization in the brain. We are particularly interested in understanding the function of the Anigiomotin family of proteins and the Hippo pathway signaling in the central nervous system”.
Grzegorz Chodaczek, PhD – Immunotherapy Group Leader at Łukasiewicz Research Network – PORT Polish Center for Technology Development
Graduated from the Wroclaw Medical University in 2001, where he studied at the Faculty of Pharmacy. In 2007, he received his PhD degree in immunology from the Institute of Immunology and Experimental Therapy in Wroclaw, Poland.
Between 2005-2011 he was a research associate at the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston and then a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, TX, in the Department of Immunology. His postdoctoral project involved intravital imaging of the immune system during wound healing and cancerogenesis.
In 2011, he started a new position as microscopy core manager and instructor at La Jolla Institute for Immunology, San Diego, CA. Since 2014, he has worked as the Head of Bioimaging Laboratory at Łukasiewicz Research Network – PORT Polish Center for Technology Development. His research interest is in visualizing the immune cell activity in tissues, including the cancer microenvironment.
Mateusz W. Kucharczyk, PhD – Head of Cancer Neurophysiology Research Group, Łukasiewicz – PORT and Visiting Research Fellow, Wolfson SPaRC, King’s College London, UK
Mateusz earned Biotechnology degrees (BSc, MSc) from Jagiellonian University in Kraków. As a Marie Skłodowska-Curie trainee, he completed his PhD in Neuroscience (2019) at University College London, specialising in in vivo electrophysiology with Professor Anthony Dickenson and in vivo calcium imaging with Professor Stephen McMahon (King’s College London) to study cancer-induced bone pain. After learning optogenetics in Yves De Koninck Lab (Quebec, Canada), he worked as a PDRA in Dr Kirsty Bannister group (King’s College London), where he advanced opto- and chemogenetic techniques for studying descending modulatory circuits in health and disease.
His group bridges Neuroscience with Oncology, aiming to comprehend neurogenic regulation of carcinogenesis and associated pain. Employing state-of-the-art techniques (i.e., in vivo optical imaging, electrophysiology and optogenetics) they selectively sample and modulate activity of genetically defined neuronal populations and their effects on tumour biology. In this pursuit, the group aspires to forge innovative therapies for cancer and associated pain, rooted in a deep understanding of neuronal systems.
Agnieszka Krzyżosiak, PhD – Head of the Research Group of Mechanisms of Neurodegeneration at Łukasiewicz – PORT from February 2023
Agnieszka completed her PhD research at The Institute of Genetics and Molecular and Cellular Biology (IGBMC) in Strasbourg, France. She next accomplished the EMBO and HFSP funded postdoc at the Medical Research Council Laboratory of Molecular Biology (MRC LMB) in Cambridge, UK followed by the translational development of her scientific research in a spinoff biotech startup.
Agnieszka’s lab is interested to understand how protein quality control (PQC) deregulation contributes to neurodegeneration. In her previous research, together with her colleagues, Agnieszka showed that PQC can be targeted for the therapeutic benefit against protein accumulation – an approach currently developed clinically. Building on that, with the use of patient-derived models, the aim of the lab is to scrutinize the PQC pathways in neurodegeneration in the aim to identify novel treatment strategies.
Ali Jawaid, PhD – Head of the Research Group of Translational Neuropsychiatry
Ali Jawaid, PhD is a physician-scientist with training in both clinical and basic neuroscience. He is a Principal Research Investigator at the Research Network Łukasiewicz – PORT Polish Center for Technology Development.
He completed his medical studies from Aga Khan University, Karachi, Pakistan, and followed it up with fellowship in Neuropsychiatry from Baylor College of Medicine, Houston, TX, USA. He then proceeded to complete an MD-PhD in Neuroscience from Switzerland (simultaneous PhD degrees awarded by UZH/ETH International Program in Neuroscience and UZH MD-PhD program in 2016). Dr. Ali Jawaid currently heads the Laboratory for Translational Research in Exposures and Neuropsychiatric Disorders (TREND Lab) at the Nencki Institute, Warsaw, Poland.
Dr. Jawaid has worked extensively in the fields of childhood trauma, memory, neurodegenerative disorders, neuroepigenetics, and epigenetic inheritance.
He has authored 75+ publications, in notable scientific journals, such as Nature, Science, Nature Neuroscience, Nature Human Behavior, Neuron, Nature Communications, Trends in Genetics, EMBO Journal, and Molecular Neurodegeneration and has a current H-index of 28.
He chaired the European MD-PhD association between 2016 and 2018 and is currently a scholar of the FENS-Kavli Network of Excellence. He is a fiction author, poet, and virtual-reality enthusiast outside of scientific work.
Julio Aguado, PhD – Head of the Research Group of Molecular Neurobiology
Julio Aguado, PhD is a Principal Research Investigator at the Research Network Łukasiewicz – PORT Polish Center for Technology Development. He is also a Research Fellow at the Australian Institute for Bioengineering and Nanotechnology (AIBN).
His focus is centered in the study of human aging and its interplay with DNA damage, telomeres, senescence, and neurodegeneration. His research interest is the use of human brain organoids as models for the study of brain aging, and to utilise spatial and single-cell transcriptomics to understand senescence heterogenity and biological clocks in the context of aging.
Dr Julio Aguado obtained his PhD in 2018 from the European School of Molecular Medicine (University of Milan) as a Marie Curie fellow of the European Union where he investigated the role of non-coding RNAs generated upon induction of DNA damage. He has published several first-author papers on mechanisms of aging in peer-reviewed journals including Nature Communications, Aging Cell, Nature Protocols and Ageing Research Reviews.
His research is supported by grants such as a NHMRC Ideas Grant, a University of Queensland Early Career Researcher Grant, a Brisbane Children’s Hospital Foundation grant and a Jérôme Lejeune Postdoctoral Fellowship (Paris, France).