Ina Sonnen is a group leader at the Hubrecht Institute. Within the Beyond the Blastocyst consortium she investigates how signalling pathways and in particular signalling dynamics regulate early human development. She obtained her PhD in 2012 from the University Basel, Switzerland, for her research in the lab of Erich Nigg at the Max Planck Institute of Biochemistry, Munich, and Biozentrum Basel. Combining cell biological and biochemical techniques with super-resolution microscopy she studied the structure and duplication of centrosomes during cell proliferation. She then performed postdoctoral work at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) in the groups of Alexander Aulehla (developmental biology) and Christoph Merten (microfluidics) to study how signalling pathways control periodic segmentation of the vertebrate embryo (somitogenesis). There she established a microfluidic system, which allows simultaneous perturbations of signalling pathways at high temporal precision with real-time imaging. She has used this to dissect the function of signalling oscillations during somitogenesis. With her own group at the Hubrecht Institute Ina combines these techniques with biochemical and single-cell techniques to study the function and mechanism of how signalling and signalling dynamics control both embryonic development and adult tissue homeostasis. In collaboration with other groups, she has established gastruloids as embryo-like model system of somitogenesis.

Tomas Noordzij is a PhD student in the Sonnen lab. He investigates how signalling pathways regulate early human development.

Lisa Sackmann is a PhD student (start 2023) in the group of Dr. Ina Sonnen and Dr. Jop Kind at the Hubrecht Institute in Utrecht. She completed her Bachelor’s degree in Biomedical Sciences in Maastricht where she found her interest in developmental biology and fertility. There, she joined Dr. Masoud Zamani (UMCU) to write her thesis on single-cell technologies in reproductive medicine. To follow up, she completed her Master’s degree (Cancer, Stem Cells and Developmental Biology) in Utrecht. As part of the programme, she developed single-molecule imaging tools for C. elegans in the group of Dr. Suzan Ruijtenberg (UU). As part of the U/Select Honours programme, she went abroad to join the group of Dr. Jérôme Gros at Institut Pasteur in Paris. Here, she explored the role of mechanics in modulating pluripotency during early quail development with spatial transcriptomics technology. Based on her interest in the early embryo, advanced imaging, and the modulating role of mechanics, she applied to join the PSIDER project in the Sonnen and Kind lab. In her PhD, she will explore the role of the mechanical environment and internal forces during early human development as well as implantation through the use of artificial embryo-like structures (blastoids).

Jop Kind is a PI of the Blastoid consortium and a group leader at the Hubrecht Institute (since 2018) and Oncode Institute (since 2018). His groups aim is to obtain better understanding of the role of chromatin and epigenetics in gene regulation. More specifically, the work is directed towards understanding the mechanisms that govern the acquisition of new identities and traits in lineage specification events in early mouse development and in cancer. To this end his group employs and develops single-cell genomics technologies to delineate these processes in great detail and with high temporal resolution.

Esther Baart is head of the laboratory for Reproductive Medicine, Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, Erasmus MC, University Medical Center Rotterdam. She graduated from Wageningen University in 1998 with an MSc degree in Cell Biology. She continued as a junior researcher, working on both female and male mammalian meiosis, and developed a murine model system for studying fertilization and embryo development after intracytoplasmic sperm injection. She went on to obtain her PhD degree at the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, Erasmus MC. Between 2005-2008 she worked as a clinical embryologist and researcher at the University Medical Center, Utrecht. In 2008, she moved back to the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology at the Erasmus MC, where she is currently working as head of the IVF laboratory and assistant professor. She brings a long standing research interest in embryo aneuploidy and chromosomal mosaicism to the consortium, with several well-cited papers showing that chromosomal abnormalities are the main factor that limits the success of IVF. By successfully establishing a research program at the intersection of clinical embryology and fundamental developmental biology, she aims to understand the origins of these abnormalities and the impact on human development and IVF success. These central questions are addressed using cutting edge stem cell, cell biology and molecular biology techniques and insights, together with leading experts in these fields. Using human embryos donated for research, advanced embryo models, imaging techniques and innovative single cell approaches, we explore embryonic mechanisms to understand chromatin and chromosome behaviour in human embryos and how this impacts development.