Seminars

Upcoming Seminars 

All talks usually take place at 2pm in the Alfred Denny Conference room, and will be followed by Pizza and networking. There will also be a chance for careers chats over lunch with many of the speakers - watch out for announcements closer to the time.

Thursday 29th February 2024 at 2pm30:  Dr Sankari Nagarajan 

Tuesday 30th April 2024 at 2pmDr Yiliang Ding 

Thursday 27th June 2024 at 2pmDr Saima Shahid

Speaker nominations

External Speakers

We welcome nominations for speakers from across all areas of nucleic acids research. If you have a nomination for an external speaker, please complete the External speaker nomination form.

Internal Speakers

We are always looking for speakers from within the University of Sheffield for our short ECR talks. ECR talks are 10 minutes long, and are a great chance to present your data to a friendly and interested audience. If you have a story that you'd like to present, or if you know someone who has a story that might be of interest to SInFoNiA members, please suggest them using the Internal Speaker nomination form

Previous Seminars 

Recordings of seminars are provided shortly after the seminar, if available.

6th October 2023:  

Dr Archa Fox, University of Western Australia

Title: Paraspeckles and paraspeckle building blocks: the roles of RNA and RNA binding proteins in phase separation and disease (hosted by Dr Tatyana Shelkovnikova)

Dr Fay Cooper,  (Early Career Researcher) School of Biosciences,  University of Sheffield 

Watch the recorded seminar here.


20th July 2023:  

CPI Biologics unit

A team from the CPI Biologics visited Sheffield to explore the possibility of future collaborations with SInFoNiA members and the wider university.  



CPI is part of the UK government’s High Value Manufacturing Catapult; the following pages highlight some of their activities:



29th June 2023:  

Dr Pawel Grzechnik, University of Manchester

Adam Parker, (Early Career Researcher) Plants, Photosynthesis and Soil, University of Sheffield 

25th May 2023:  

Dr Hannah Long, MRC Human Genetics Unit, University of Edinburgh

Victoria Hill,  (Early Career Researcher) Department of Chemistry, University of Sheffield 

23rd February 2023

Dr Sarah Harris, University of Leeds 

29th November 2022

Dr Chris Hill, University of York (Sir Henry Dale Fellow)

Dr Arwa Abugable, University of Sheffield (Early Career Researcher)

On this session we heard about Dr Arwa Abugable, from The School of Biosciences, who recently passed her PhD viva, on her latest publication in Nature (~10 mins). Title: NuMA regulates DNA repair and transcription in response to oxidative DNA damage.


Our external talk was presented by Dr Chris Hill, Sir Henry Dale Fellow and Principal Investigator Department of Biology, from the University of York (~40 mins), who spoke about the Molecular mechanisms of ribosomal frameshifting in RNA viruses, touching on an inspiring story of determination involving the SARS-CoV-2 RNA and crystallization.


If you missed these talks and wish to learn more about the topics click the link below!

https://eu-lti.bbcollab.com/recording/8c3e26fb41554948840ec56d6602aebf 

We will see you in 2023!

27th October 2022

Dr Tatyana Shelkovnikova,  University of Sheffield (UKRI Future Leaders Fellow)

Dr Mark Dunning,  University of Sheffield (Bioinformatics Core Facility) 

SInFoNiA is back for the academic year 2022/23! 

To kick start a new year of exciting talks, Dr Tatyana Shelkovnikova, a UKRI Future Leaders Fellow in Sheffield Institute for Translational Neuroscience (SITraN) joined us and spoke about Stress-responsive RNA-protein biocondensates in health and disease.


The second talk was presented by Dr Mark Dunning from the Department of Infection, Immunity and Cardiovascular Disease, who kindly guided us through the Sheffield Bioinformatics Core - How we can help your research.


To round up the session, Dr Lewis Quayle, a Cancer Bioinformatician from the Department of Oncology & Metabolism spoke about Best Practice Next-Generation Sequencing Data Analysis for Dummies.

Recording: https://eu-lti.bbcollab.com/recording/9048fd767d0543f2b305ef27a934d774 


14th June 2022 

Professor Glenn Burley  , University of Strathclyde

Carmen-Valentina Apostol,  University of Sheffield (Early Career Researcher)


The first talk in the session is presented by Carmen-Valentina Apostol, a PhD student in the School of Biosciences (10 mins).

Title: A novel sensor for nascent RNA


The second talk is presented by Professor Glenn Burley from the University of Strathclyde (45 mins).

Title: Establishing a chemical biological toolbox to control gene expression with small molecules

Recording: https://eu-lti.bbcollab.com/recording/c4e007476c87418194b007dc343c44fe

26th May 2022 

Dr Luke GreenUniversity of Sheffield 

Peter Daniels, University of Sheffield (Early Career Researcher)


The first talk in the session is by Peter Daniels, a PhD student in the School of Biosciences (10 mins).

Title: Rex1 and RNase T: Different Structural Means to the Same 3' Ends


The second talk is by Dr Luke Green from the Department of Infection, Immunity and Cardiovascular Disease (30 mins).

Title: Hijack of the host: Interplay of the host and bacteria during infection

Recording: https://eu-lti.bbcollab.com/recording/a45144e85e334b50b71b96dabc297e5f

26th April 2022 

Dr Zoltan Kis, University of Sheffield 

Patricia Bellver, University of Sheffield (Early Career Researcher)

The first talk is by Dr Zoltan Kis from the Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering.

Title: Quality by digital design and techno-economic modelling of RNA vaccine production


The second speaker is Patricia Bellver, a PhD student from the Department of Oncology & Metabolism.

Title: Discovering and developing ways to inhibit the BubR1-PIDD interaction to enhance tumour cell death in response to radiation

Recording: https://eu-lti.bbcollab.com/recording/c1a0c15bb1f74ed89b848f91f6da6707