Originally from Australia, I completed my PhD in the field of neuroscience at the University of Western Australia. This was followed by postdoctoral studies at the Karolinska Institute, Sweden, where I switched from studying neuronal cell death to neuronal birth. During the later stages of my postdoctoral period I started a side project looking at fat cell turnover in human adipose tissue. This project developed in to several more projects and now the major interest of my research group is fat and the healthy and pathological function of mature human fat cells.

Contact: kirsty.spalding@ki.se 

I have a Bachelor of Molecular Biology and Biotechnology at KI. I have been working in the Spalding group as a lab manager since 2012. Between 1993 and 2012 I was working as a research scientist at AstraZeneca R&D, CNS and Pain. I have 3 years experience at a Clinical Immunology lab at Huddinge hospital as a laboratory technician. I have many administrative tasks in the group, but also contribute to various scientific project. 

Contact: lena.appelsved@ki.se 

I completed my PhD in epigenetics in Hong Kong. I am interested in adipocyte senescence and the potential epigenetic mechanisms governing the process.  

Contact: esther.wan@ki.se 

I completed my Ph.D. in the Department of Biochemistry at Hallym University in South Korea. My research focused on the regulation of DNA damage repair mechanisms by FOXO3a during the aging process. Currently, I am a postdoctoral fellow at the Spalding Group, where I am researching DNA damage repair mechanisms in adipocytes.  

Contact: gozde.inci@ki.se

After two years of delving into stem cell-derived pancreatic cells as an Institutional Fellow at Harvard University, my focus has shifted to insulin signaling in adipose tissue.

Contact: benjamin.dedic@ki.se 

I have a master’s degree in molecular biology from Stockholm university and am currently working as a research assistant in Kirsty Spalding’s group. I previously did my thesis project here wherein I tried to understand why adipocytes in the omental depot have lower levels of senescence than adipocytes in the subcutaneous depot, within the same individual. Now continue this work as a doctoral student.

Contact: leo.westerberg@ki.se 

After completing a master’s degree in medical epigenomics at the Radboud University, I am currently working as a doctoral student in Kirsty’s group. Here I study the browning potential of mature white adipocytes using fluorescence microscopy, qPCR and other techniques from molecular biology.  

Contact: niels.kramer@ki.se 

With background in clinical biomedicine, I came to Karolinska Institutet to study Master of science in Nutrition science. My one-year thesis project at the Spalding lab focuses on subcutaneous mature adipocyte senescence in individuals with obesity, SASP, and effects of the secreted factors on breast cancer cells." 

I have a bachelor’s degree in Biochemistry from the University of Barcelona. Now, I am doing a master’s in Biomedical Sciences at the University of Amsterdam. As part of my master’s thesis, I am doing an 8-month internship in Kirsty Spalding’s lab group. Here I am going to study the differences in lysosomal content and activity between adipocytes from the omental depot versus adipocytes from the subcutaneous depot.