Cell scientist to watch – Lidia Vasilieva

Lidia received a bachelor's degree from Krasnoyarsk State University in Russia and a master's degree from the Institute of Protein Research in Moscow. She then moved to Finland to work with Leevi Kääriäinen on the replication of RNA viruses for her PhD. Her postdoctoral studies led her to Harvard Medical School with a fellowship from the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society. Under the supervision of Steve Buratowski, Lidia focused on transcriptional regulation in eukaryotes. In 2009, Lidia obtained a Wellcome Trust Career Development Fellowship and started her own research group at the Department of Biochemistry in Oxford. She has been named a Wellcome Trust Senior Research fellow in 2015, and was awarded the British Society for Cell Biology Women in Cell Biology Early Career Medal the following year. Her group investigates the molecular transcriptional and post-transcriptional mechanisms that control RNA levels of protein-coding and non-coding transcripts in response to cellular or developmental programmes.