The Team

Katelyn Spillane graduated from the University of Massachusetts Amherst in 2006 with a B.S. in Chemistry and a B.A. in Music. She received her PhD in Physical Chemistry from the University of California Berkeley in 2011 supervised by Prof. Richard Mathies. In the same year, she was awarded an NIH fellowship which she took to the University of Oxford to study with Prof. Philipp Kukura in the Dept. of Chemistry. In 2013 she transitioned to immune cell biology, moving to the MRC National Institute for Medical Research and later the Francis Crick Institute, working with Dr. Pavel Tolar. In 2018, she was appointed lecturer and later senior lecturer in the Department of Physics at King’s College London. In 2024 she moved to the Department of Life Sciences at Imperial. Her research interests include immune cell biology, mechanobiology, and biophysics.

Michael graduated from University College London (UCL) with a BSc in Infection and Immunity. He undertook his undergraduate project at the Jury Lab where he investigated the differences in immune gene expression profiles of CD8+ killer T cells in Primary Sjogren's Syndrome patients. He then joined Professor Nissim's group at the William Harvey Research Institute (WHRI), assisting the team in their development and design of novel COVID-19 antibodies. Michael then moved to King's College to join Dr Katelyn Spillane's lab as a PhD student. Here he is investigating a role of mechanical force in B-cell antigen discrimination in the immune synapse using DNA-based sensors.

Rosie graduated from Newcastle University with a BSc in Biomedical Sciences and Imperial College London with an MRes in Cellular and Molecular Biosciences. After graduation she completed an internship with Deep Science Ventures in partnership with the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation and then worked as a Research Associate for Quell Therapeutics for 2 years working on CAR Treg candidate selection. In 2023, she came back to Imperial as a Research Technician in cancer immunobiology before starting her PhD in the Spillane lab in 2025, investigating the effect of integrin engagement on B-cell antigen discrimination.