Dr Teresa Niccoli graduated with a first class degree in Natural Sciences from the University of Cambridge and completed her PhD studies under Nobel Prize winner Paul Nurse’s supervision at Cancer Research UK, studying cells polarity.

She was then awarded a Beit Memorial Trust Fellowship to study oocyte development with Daniel St Johnston at the Gurdon Institute in Cambridge. Following this, she took an extended career break to look after her two sons.

She returned to scientific research by joining Linda Partridge’s laboratory at  the Institute of Healthy Ageing at UCL, and then Adrian Isaacs’ laboratory at the Institute of Neurology at UCL. She is using the fruit-fly, Drosophila melanogaster, to model a number of neurodegenerative disease, in order to understand their pathological mechanisms and their link to ageing.