I was originally trained as a Pharmaceutical Chemist, but I became interested in Biophysics after doing an undergraduate project in the lab of Fazly Ataullakhanov. During my PhD with Ataullakhanov, I was a visiting researcher in the lab of Richard McIntosh at the University of Colorado in Boulder, CO USA, where I worked on maximising the effeciency of microtubule force-coupling using kinetochore protein oligomers reconstituted in vitro. Using the data I generated in Colorado, I defended my PhD in Biophysics at the Russian Academy of Sciences in 2011.
After my defence, I organised a small research group based at the Gamaleya Research Institute in Moscow. We worked on Centromere protein F (CENP-F) as a microtubule force-coupler. This involved a continuation of the collaboration with Dick McIntosh to work on CENP-F role in mitosis, and a new collaboration with Benoît Kornmann, then at ETH Zürich, to work on the role of CENP-F in coupling microtubule end dynamics to mitochondrial networks. I had to close down my lab in 2015 after two almost simultaneous events: Russia’s invasion into Donbas, and the shutting down of Dmitry Zimin’s Dynasty foundation, the main funder of my research. Dynasty was branded a “foreign agent” by the Russian government – a clear sign that collaboration with the West is not welcome anymore.
In 2016 I joined the lab of Marileen Dogterom at the Delft University of Technology as a postdoc, to work on a collaborative project with Pim Huis in ‘t Veld, a postdoc in the lab of Andrea Musacchio at the Max-Planck Institute of Molecular Physiology in Dortmund, focusing on reconstituting the multivalency of the microtubule-binding elements of the human kinetochore.
More recently, I became interested in electron cryo-tomography as a way to resolve unique shapes of microtubule ends and proteins that bind to them. As a postdoc with Anna Akhmanova at the Utrecht University, I worked on resolving structures of microtubule ends stopped from polymerising or depolymerising by ciliary and centrosomal proteins.
I joined QMUL in 2022 to set up an independent research group focusing on dynamic and structural approaches to understand oligomerisation of microtubule end-binding proteins during end-coupling and force generation.