Principal Investigator

Dan Brierley

Group Leader / Sir Henry Dale Research Fellow

Dan established his independent research group at UCL in January 2022 following the award of a Sir Henry Dale research fellowship from the Wellcome Trust and the Royal Society. Prior to this fellowship, he conducted postdoctoral research on brainstem GLP-1 signalling in Stefan Trapp’s lab at UCL, and doctoral research on therapeutic appetite and metabolism regulation by phytocannabinoids  under Claire Williams and Ben Whalley at the University of Reading.

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Current Lab Members

Lauren Jones

Postdoctoral Research Fellow

Lauren joined the lab in April 2023, after completing her PhD studying the neurophysiology and pathophysiology of enterochromaffin cells with Damien Keating at Flinders University. Lauren is now spearheading a major in vivo research project investigating Western diet obesity-induced dysfunction in gut-brain satiation circuitry. 

Bidisha Roy

Project Student – BSc Biomedical Sciences

Bidisha joined the  lab in 2023 to conduct her research project during her BSc in Biomedical Sciences at UCL. She is using behavioural and neuroanatomical approaches to investigate Western-diet induced activation of gut-brain circuitry.

Jonathan Aderanti

Project Student – MSci Pharmacology

Jonathan joined the  lab in 2023 to conduct his research project during his MSci in Pharmacology at UCL. He is using behavioural and neuroanatomical approaches to investigate the neural circuit mechanisms of anti-obesity GLP-1RA drugs.

Shirley Nannono-Senabulya

Project Student – MSc Experimental Pharmacology and Therapeutics

Shirley joined the  lab in 2023 to conduct her research project during her MSc in Experimental Pharmacology and Therapeutics at UCL. She is developing a novel behavioural platform and using it to interrogate the function of feeding behaviour circuitry in the brainstem.

Lyla Yu

Project Student – MSc  Neuroscience

Lyla joined the  lab in 2023 to conduct her research project during her MSc in Neuroscience at UCL. She is using neuroanatomical methods including serial 2-photon tomography for mapping Western diet recruited gut-brain neural circuits.

Nick Monaco

PhD Rotation – Wellcome Trust Optical Biology Programme

Nick joined the  lab in 2023 to conduct a rotation project as part of his PhD on the Wellcome Trust Optical Biology programme at UCL. He is developing novel methods for closed loop optical control of gut-brain neural circuits during feeding behaviour.

Previous Lab Members

Jennifer Lee

Project Student – MSci Pharmacology

Jennifer joined the  lab in 2022 to conduct her research project during her MSci in Pharmacology at UCL. She helped validate a transgenic mouse model for activity-dependent genetic labelling  of Western-diet recruited gut-brain circuitry.

Natalie Figueredo Burgos

Research Technician

Natalie joined the lab  in 2022 as an external student to conduct a rotation project for her MRes in Experimental Neuroscience at Imperial College London. Her project used quantitative RNAscope in nodose ganglia to characterise gut hormone receptor co-expression in vagal afferent neurons. Natalie continued this project and developed new experimental protocols during her subsequent appointment as a technician in the Brierley lab, and stayed in the department to conduct her PhD with Alice Adriaenssens.

Jia Bo He

Project Student – MSci Applied Medical Sciences

Jia joined the  lab in 2022 to conduct her research project during her MSci in Applied Medical Sciences at UCL. She used viral tracing in  transgenic mice combined with quantitative immunohistochemistry to map circuits in the brainstem recruited by anti-obesity GLP-1RA drugs.  

Sabrina Goldring

Project student – MRes Clinical Drug Development

Sabrina joined the  lab in 2021 to conduct her research project during her MRes in Clinical Drug Development at UCL. Her project utilised quantitative immunohistochemistry and automated feeding behaviour analyses to assess the neuronal and behavioural consequences of pharmacological augmentation of gut GLP-1 signalling.