Roles and subjects

Senior Research Fellow in Biology

Academic background

Professor Tatjana Sauka-Spengler obtained a BA in Theoretical Physics from the University of Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina. She earned two graduate degrees from the University of Paris, in Solid State Physics and in Interface Physics/Biology (Development and Evolution). Professor Sauka-Spengler pursued her postdoctoral research in Developmental Genetics and Bioengineering at the California Institute of Technology from 2003 to 2008 and was a Research Assistant Professor at Caltech from 2008 to 2011. In 2011, Professor Sauka-Spengler obtained a WIMM Senior Research Fellowship, and in 2014, she was appointed Associate Professor at the University of Oxford, achieving the title of full Professor of Developmental Genomics and Gene Regulation in 2019.

Research interests

Dr. Sauka-Spengler’s research interests focus on the network organization of gene regulatory programs in developmental processes and modifying these programs in diseased states. Her work also involves reverse engineering gene regulatory circuits for neural crest cell specification and developing stem cell-directed, differentiation-based therapies. Her research includes dissecting developmental pathways and gene regulatory networks in vertebrate models such as zebrafish, chick, and lamprey and conducting single-cell and specific cell population analysis in developing embryos.

Postgraduate Teaching

• Genomics and Gene Regulation
• Developmental Biology/Embryology
• Evolutionary Biology
• Molecular and Cell Biology