The Team
Group Leader
Jonathan Worboys
Jonathan is a Wellcome Research Fellow based in the Lydia Becker Institute of Immunology and Inflammation.
Jonathan is from South Wales and in 2006 he moved to study Biology at Imperial College London. In 2010 he relocated to the Institute of Cancer Research in London. He obtained a BBSRC CASE studentship to work on oncogenic kinase signalling using mass spectrometry with Prof. Claus Jørgensen . For his postdoctoral studies, he switched fields to work in immunology at the University of Manchester. In 2015 he worked with Dr. Gloria Lopez-Castejon on the ubiquitination of the innate immune receptor NLRP3 and in 2018 joined Prof. Dan Davis’ group where he used super-resolution microscopy to study the organisation of immunoreceptors. In 2024 he received a prestigious 8-year Wellcome Career Development Award to start his own research group at the University.
Postdoctoral Research Associates
William Zammit
Will studied for a Bachelor’s degree in Pharmacology at the University of Portsmouth in 2016, followed by a Master’s degree in Drug Discovery Skills from King’s College London in 2017. He then worked for a few years in industry working with Medimmune, F-Star Therapeutic and Bicycle Therapeutics before joining the University of Manchester on a 4-year PhD program in the Wellcome Trust Immunomatrix in Complex Disease. He is now a postdoc in the lab, supported by the Wellcome transition funding. Will has been using proximity proteomics to study TIGIT signalling.
Thomas Elliot
Tom completed his undergraduate studies in Biomedical Science at the University of Sheffield in 2017 before gaining an MRes degree in Cancer Sciences from the University of Birmingham in 2019, studying immunosuppressive myeloid cells under Carmela De Santo. Tom completed his PhD in 2024 with Dr. David Bending at the University of Birmingham, working on T cell receptor signalling dynamics in models of tolerance and cancer. In 2024, Tom joined the Worboys lab to study the role of TIGIT in the regulation of T cell activation.
Suraj Jagtap
Suraj obtained his Bachelor’s degree in Chemical Engineering at the Institute of Chemical Technology in Mumbai in 2015 and his Master’s degree in 2017 from the Indian Institute of Science in Bengaluru. During his Master’s, Suraj used super-resolution microscopy approaches to visualise the assembly of M13 bacteriophages on the surface of living bacteria. He stayed in Bengaluru to complete his PhD in 2023 with Dr. Rahul Roy, working at the interplay of immunity and viral evolution. In 2025, he joined the Worboys lab to study how the spatial organisation of TIGIT drives its function in T cells.
Technicians
Lucy Le Maistre
Lucy is our Research Technician and is originally from Jersey. In 2019 she moved to London to complete her undergraduate studies in Biochemistry at University College London. Following a year working in a hospital laboratory, she moved to Manchester for her postgraduate studies. Here she studied Clinical Immunology at the University of Manchester, completing a research project at Lydia Becker focused on the role of the glycocalyx in immune cell recruitment.
Students
Huasen Yu
Huasen is a PhD student split between our lab and the Bertuzzi lab within the Manchester Fungal Infection Group. He joined the lab in September 2025 to study host-pathogen interactions using proximity labelling approaches.
Ethan Newman
Ethan is a Master’s student at the University of Manchester and joined the lab in September 2025 to study how extending the extracellular domain of TIGIT affects its ability to signal and inhibit T cells.
Interested in Joining?
We are actively seeking enthusiastic individuals to join our team. Please see our current available positions below or get in touch via email.
The Worboys Lab 