Generating parasite shape for pathogenicity

Richard is researching how the single-cell eukaryotic parasites which cause sleeping sickness (African trypanosomes) and leishmaniasis (Leishmania species) control and change their shape. He specialises in light and electron microscopy, combined with computational image analysis and mathematical modelling, and will use these techniques to determine how and why these cells change shape to adapt to the mammalian bloodstream, intracellular and insect gut environments they encounter through their life cycles. Richard will be working with Professor Anthony Hyman (Max Planck Institute of Molecular Cell Biology, Dresden), Professor Keith Gull (University of Oxford) and Professor Markus Engstler (Universität Würzburg), who have particular expertise in microtubule dynamics, trypanosome cell biology and the swimming behaviours of parasites respectively.