Dr Jelle van den Ameele

As a medical student at Ghent University (Belgium), I became interested in developmental neurobiology and joined Pierre Vanderhaeghen's lab at the ULB in Brussels to study transcriptional regulation of brain development. My PhD (2014) and neurology training sparked an interest in mitochondrial genetics and metabolism. Thanks to postdoctoral fellowships from EMBO and Wellcome (2014-2019), I then moved to the lab of Andrea Brand at the Gurdon Institute in Cambridge to study metabolism of brain development in Drosophila, and to develop innovative DamID-based approaches for genome-wide chromatin profiling in Drosophila and vertebrates. I joined the Department of Clinical Neurosciences and the MBU in Cambridge in 2020 funded by a Clinical Research Career Development Fellowship from Wellcome. 

At the MBU, I chair the MBU WIDE (Wellbeing, Inclusion, Diversity and Equality) group. As a positive culture champion at the School of Clinical Medicine and as part of the Mid-Career Fellows (MCF) Network, I try to promote a culture of integrity, openness and enthusiasm within and outside the lab and aim to enhance environmental sustainability wherever possible. 

As a neurologist, I continue to do clinical work and actively participate in the clinical research programme MitoCamb of the mitochondrial genetics clinic in Addenbrooke’s, together with Patrick Chinnery and Rita Horvath.