Veronica Biga

Mathematical Research Associate
veronica.biga@manchester.ac.uk
+44 (0)161 275 7221

Veronica completed her bachelor’s degree in Control Engineering at Gheorghe Asachi Technical University of Iasi, Romania in 2006. As part of her final year, Veronica undertook a study period at the University of Sheffield, UK as a Socrates/Erasmus exchange student. It was during this time that she was first introduced to research into stem cell biology. This experience changed her career aims and led to  a PhD scholarship at the University of Sheffield under the supervision of Prof Daniel Coca. Veronica was a graduate student in the Department of Automatic Control and Systems Engineering and worked closely with biologists at the Centre for Stem Cell Biology until completion of her PhD in 2011.

Veronica was a postdoctoral Research Associate at the University of Sheffield until 2015. She was part of an international team funded by The Human Frontier Science Program led by Prof Peter Andrews, Prof Daniel Coca (University of Sheffield) and Prof Martin Pera (University of Melbourne). She became interested in designing and conducting her own laboratory experiments and undertook training in human embryonic stem cell culture and microfluidic manipulation of cells in the Andrews Lab. Read about Veronica’s research at Sheffield and watch her video.

Veronica joined the Papalopulu Lab at the University of Manchester in October 2015 as a Mathematical Research Associate to yo further her interdisciplinary experience. She combines computational experience and laboratory skills to study dynamic heterogeneous expression of Hes1/5 proteins in live neural progenitor stem cells.

Key publication:
Time-Lapse Analysis of Human Embryonic Stem Cells Reveals Multiple Bottlenecks Restricting Colony Formation and Their Relief upon Culture Adaptation. V Biga, I Barbaric, P J Gokhale, M Jones, D Stavish, A Glen, D Coca and P W Andrews, Stem Cell Reports, Vol. 3 (1), p142–155, 2014.