Dr. Þorkell Guðjónsson
Senior research fellow in Stefán Þ Sigurðsson lab at the Faculty of Medicine, Department of Health Science, University of Iceland.
thgud (at) hi.is
phone: +354-867-5631
Þorkell received a bachelor's degree in molecular biology from the University of Iceland in 2006. In 2009 he graduated as a master of science in human biology from the University of Copenhagen. His project focused on functionally characterizing genes with a potential role in maintaining genomic stability. His project supervisor was Dr. Claus Storgaard Sørensen. After his master’s, Þorkell joined the Lukas lab at the NNF Center for Protein Research, where he defended his PhD in november 2014. The focus of his thesis was to screen for novel regulators of the ubiquitin dependent chromatin response to DNA damage.
In 2014 Þorkell joined Stefán Þ Sigurðsson´s lab as a postdoctoral fellow. The focus of his current work is to understand the mechanism that contribute to the maintenance of genomic stability in humans. The loss of genomic stability results in increased accumulation of mutations and is considered a key pathogenic step in the early stages of tumorigenesis. Increased knowledge on how these mechanisms are regulated is one of the major topics in cancer biology and important for the development of novel cancer treatments.
Group members:
Dr. Kritika Kirty, Post doctoral research fellow
Dr Kirty received her Bachelor’s and Master’s degree in Zoology from the University of Delhi, India. She received her Ph.D from the School of Life Sciences, Jawaharlal Nehru University, India. During the course of her graduate studies she worked on different aspects of skin biology related to pigmentation. Her work focused on comprehensive identification of transcriptional regulatory networks controlling melanogenesis uncovered using a chemogenomic approach.
Dr. Kirty joined Stefán Þ Sigurðsson’s lab in February 2017 where she is currently interested in investigating novel roles of the melanogenesis master regulator, MITF in melanoma and non-melanoma cells.
E-mail: kritikakirty (at) hi.is
Phone: +354 767 0466
Current students
Stefán Þór Hermanowicz, PhD student
Project title: Researching the impact of epigenetically modified DNA repair genes on the formation and treatment of various cancers.
E-mail. sthh16 (at) hi.is
Elísabet A Frick, PhD student
Project title: The role of miR-190b in breast cancer
E-mail: eaf3 (at) hi.is
Gunnlaug Ruth Guðmundsdóttir, MSc student
Project title: The functional role of USPL1 in DNA damage response
E-mail: grg17 (at) hi.is
Jasper van der Horst, MSc student
Project title: Epigenetic modifications of DNA repair genes in breast cancer.
E-mail: jv8 (at) hi.is
Graduated students
Drífa Hrund Guðmundsdóttir, MSc
Project title: Identifying novel regulators of the cellular response to DNA damage
E-mail: dhg1 (at) hi.is