Jennifer Gilbert

Jennifer Gilbert is a postdoctoral researcher (working in Margaret Holme's group) whose research focusses on understanding the structure and composition of lipid nanoparticles (LNP) and how they interact with membranes. Although LNP samples are often treated as homogeneous, they usually contain different subpopulations. It is important to understand how the structure and composition (e.g. lipid segregation) is different within these subpopulations, and how this in turn affects their interactions with and effect on biological membranes e.g. in case of fusion and/or cargo release.

Jennifer received her PhD in Physical Chemistry from Lunds Universitet in 2023, focussing on characterising the structure and dynamics of lipid nanoparticles loaded with different biomolecules, such as proteins and nucleic acid (DNA, RNA). She received an integrated MSci in Natural Sciences from the University of Southampton in 2019. She did her Master's thesis at Lunds Universitet, studying the structure and kinetics of the industrial enzyme beta-galactosidase encapsulated in a lipid sponge phase, and her Bachelor thesis at the University of Southampton, using Raman spectroscopy of gold nanoparticles with a pH sensitive label to detect pH changes inside cells.