Research Associates
Silan Zhang received her master's degree in Materials Physics and Chemistry from University of Chinese Academy of Sciences in 2018. She then went on to earn a PhD from Linkoping University in 2023 in Applied Physics. During her PhD, she was focused on the working mechanisms of organic electrochemical transistors. Currently, she is a VR (Swedish Research Council) international postdoc fellow at the University of Cambridge, where she is focusing on the charges transport kinetics within mixed ionic-electronic semiconductors.
Zixuan (Henry) Lu received his Bachelor’s degree (BSc) in Materials Science and Engineering from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) and Master’s degree (MRes) in Nanomaterials from Imperial College London. He pursued his PhD in Biotechnology at the University of Cambridge receiving guidance from Professor Róisín M Owens, where he developed organic electronic devices for integrating with lipid bilayers and native cell membranes, with applications in drug screening and virus detection. After receiving his PhD degree in 2023, he began his first postdoctoral research focused on developing bioelectronic brain-nose model. In 2025, he started his postdoctoral research at Bioelectronics Laboratory centring on using biohybrid neuro-implants for treating Parkinson’s disease.
Morgane Colom holds a BSc in Cognitive Sciences (2015) from the University Lumière Lyon II and an MSc in Neuroscience, Animal Behaviour and Cognition (2017) from the University Toulouse Paul Sabatier in France. She received her Ph.D (2023) in Behavioural Neuroscience from the Open University (Milton Keynes, UK) in Dr Bryan Singer’s lab, where she investigated the relationship between individual variation in motivated behaviour and alterations in accumbal synaptic plasticity in rodents. She first joined the University of Cambridge in 2023 as a member of Prof. Amy Milton’s group in the Dept. of Psychology, with additional mentorship from Prof. Trevor Robbins; her postdoctoral research focussed on characterising the effect of dopaminergic agents on striatal dopamine signalling and motivation deficits. As a Research Associate in the Bioelectronics Lab, Morgane conducts in vivo validation of biohybrid neural implants designed to restore neurological function in rodent models of neurodegenerative disorders.
Yunxia (Sandy) Jin received her PhD degree in Materials Science and Engineering from Fudan University, China advised by Prof. Fei Xiao, with joint PhD training at University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) advised by Prof. Qibing Pei. During her stay at Fudan University, her research mainly focused on silver nanowire-based transparent composite electrodes, for which she was awarded three research grants. She had postdoc training at National University of Singapore with Prof. John Ho and Prof. Chwee Teck Lim, where she developed high-density brain interface with non-modified electrodes resolving highly-packed neurons, and wireless nerve modulator featuring a new integrated device design that achieved mechanical matching and compression-free performance. At the Bioelectronics lab, she aims to develop multifunctional soft electronics for next-generation neural interfaces with a particular interest in gut-brain interactions.
Yifei Luo is a Senior Scientist at the Institute of Materials Research and Engineering (IMRE), Agency for Science, Technology and Research (A*STAR), Singapore, and a visiting postdoctoral fellow at the Bioelectronics Laboratory. She obtained her bachelor's and PhD degrees in Materials Science and Engineering from Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, in 2016 and 2021, respectively. Her PhD thesis on using thermoresponsive hydrogel for plant electrophysiology monitoring won the top prize in the Three Minute Thesis Asia-Pacific Final. After graduation, Yifei joined IMRE to continue her research on plant-wearable electrophysiology sensors and also undertook several other projects, including recyclable ionogel for human-wearable motion sensing and luminescent nanomaterials for volatile organic compounds sensing. Supported by the A*STAR International Fellowship, Yifei is now working on organic electrochemical transistor-based biosensing of the nervous system at the Bioelectronics Laboratory.
Ruben Ruiz-Mateos Serrano is a PhD student at the University of Cambridge and part of the joint Cambridge/UCL Connected Electronics and Photonics CDT program. He received his MEng in Biomedical Engineering from Imperial College London (2021) where he was supervised by Prof. Emmanuel Drakakis. His final year masters project focused on the design of neuromorphic biomimetic circuits which replicate the exact dynamics of the Nobel Prize winning Hodgkin Huxley equations on neuronal dynamics by means of ultra-low-power, microelectronic integrated circuits. As part of the CDT, Ruben received a MRes from the University of Cambridge (2022) during which he worked in a joint project with Prof. Demosthenous from UCL to implement an ultra-low-power, microelectronic chip that performs analogue signal processing of photoplethysmography measurements to predict blood pressure. His interests include the design of ultra-low power microelectronic biocircuits, that is, topologies which replicate the behaviour of biological systems with very high power and area constraints. His current research involves the design and implementation of a non-invasive and portable diagnostics device for ECG imaging based on body surface potential mapping.