Ms Diana Andreea Catana

Diana graduated with an MSci in Biochemistry from UCL in 2020. During her undergraduate studies, she undertook a Biochemical Society-sponsored studentship in Dr Amandine Marechal's lab in bioenergetics. She participated with seven fellow students in UCL's team for iGEM, a synthetic biology competition, where her team won the gold medal, under the guidance of Dr Stefanie Frank. She did her final year project in Professor Flemming Hansen's lab, with the thesis: 'Side chain interaction study for C3 domain of the von Willebrand factor through NMR experiments'.

Thesis title

Coupling optical tweezers with light microscopy to unravel the mechanical forces acting on cellular organelles

Research interests

• Mechanobiology
• Visualisation of single-molecule dynamics
• Technique optimisations

PhD supervisor

Principal supervisor: Professor Sergi Garcia-Manyes