Dr. Fabrice Gielen
Team Leader
Fabrice graduated with an MEng. in Micro and Nanotechnology for Integrated Systems (Phelma, Grenoble, EPFL, Lausanne, Politecnico di Torino, Italy) and an MRes in protein and membrane chemical biology (Imperial College London). He joined Profs. Joshua Edel and Andrew deMello groups to work on his PhD at Imperial College London. His research focussed on the study of cellular membrane dynamics by developing microfluidic cell trapping platforms using dielectrophoresis and single-molecule fluorescence spectroscopy. Following his Graduation, Fabrice joined Prof. Florian Hollfelder’s lab in Cambridge as postdoctoral researcher with a view to applying microfluidic tools to important biological questions such as the evolution and discovery of enzymes (e.g. from the metagenome) and the interrogation of protein-protein interactions.
In 2017, he moved to the newly-built Living Systems Institute at the University of Exeter to establish his group and he has since been leading a team which pioneers cutting-edge microfluidics platforms to unlock novel biological insights in the fields of microbiology and enzyme engineering.
He is also Founder and Scientific Director of Drop-Tech Ltd, which commercializes droplet-on-demand platforms and provides consultancy services in the field of droplet screening.
He supports students from BSc to Post-Doctoral researchers.
Fizza Naz
PhD Student
Fizza is interested in biofilm formation and the potential of phages to eradicate them. Fizza is developing single-cell microfluidic methods to rapidly assess cellular aggregation, dispersal and response to phage exposure.
Imogen Fermor
PhD Student
Imogen develops ultrasensitive, fiber-optic-based spectroscopy for picolitre-scale biological and chemical analysis.
Gintare G.
Research Technician
Gintare supports experimental research in microfluidics and laboratory operations within the group. Her work involves contributing to a project focused on plastic degradation, alongside helping establish workflows and research infrastructure for the team.
Abbie Wilson
MbyRes in Biological Sciences
Masters by Research student in the group of Prof. Ben Temperton researching bacteriophage rebooting in cell-free systems.
Khan Hughes
MPhys
Khan is a BSc/MSci student investigating morphological plasticity of bacteria under chemical stress.
Edward O’Keefe
BSc/MSc in Natural Sciences
Edward works within the group of Dr. Wolfram Moebius and uses microfluidics tools to characterize phage life cycle.
ALUMNI
Anuj Tiwari
PhD Student 2021-2025
Anuj joined Gielen Lab after graduating with MSc in Toyohashi University of Technology, Japan. His PhD focused on developing label-free droplet microfluidic platforms integrated with AI-powered object detection to study polymicrobial interactions and phage infection dynamics at single-cell resolution.
An Mei Daniels
An Mei developed microfluidics imaging and machine learning workflows to study and track bacterial dynamics under antibiotics treatment.
BSc/MSc 2023-2025
(+2024 EPSRC-funded Summer Internship)
George Kontellas
Postdoctoral Researcher 2024-2025
In collaboration with Prof. Jennifer Littlechild , George focussed on bioinformatics studies of mutational fitness landscapes obtained using high-throughput microfluidic screens.
Simone de Rose
Postdoctoral Researcher 2021-2025
In collaboration with Prof. Jennifer Littlechild , Simone worked on plastic-degrading enzymes, screening of mutant libraries and development of deep mutational scanning pipelines.
Johanna Ganssauge
Postdoctoral Researcher 2025
Johanna worked on the development of in vitro neuro-muscular junctions using microfluidic encapsulation approaches.
Nela Nicolic
Postdoctoral Researcher 2021-2024
Nela worked on developing novel approaches to study bacteria-phage interactions in confined environments. The approach enabled accurate quantification of cell growth and bacteria–phage interactions, supporting studies of microbial dynamics at very small population scales.
Petar Nikiforov
Postdoctoral Researcher
Research Technician
PhD Student
2022-2025
Peter’s work focuses on the development of a functional phenotype flow cytometer, a system capable of analyzing and sorting individual living cells based on their real-time responses to biological stimuli. By combining microfluidic processing with functional cellular analysis, this work contributes to advancing the study of cellular heterogeneity and its applications in biomedical research.
Vasilis Anagnostidis
Research Technician
PhD Student
Postdoctoral Researcher
2017-2024
Vasilis started as a Research Technician. He obtained his PhD-by-Publication by working on image-based droplet sorters for single-cell biology, single-cell motility. He also worked on droplet microfluidics to characterise phage life history at single-phage level, and AI-assisted concentration-gradient generation for 3D culture studies in hydrogel microbeads.
Lewis Howell
BSc/MSc Natural Sciences - 2020-2021
Lewis established deep-learning-based real-time image analysis integration that set the stage for more complex single-cell analysis workflows.