Dr Rodrigo Kazu Siqueira

I began my academic journey with an undergraduate degree in biology, focusing on zoology and evolution, at the University of Brazil. During this time, I published a paper in 2010 on the 3D modelling of fossils, showcasing my early interest in computational applications. My affinity for technology led me to projects involving modelling, which paved the way for my master's degree in neuroscience at the same institution. My master's research centred on brain evolution and neuroanatomy, particularly studying the brains of artiodactyls, a project that culminated in a significant publication in Frontiers in Neuroanatomy in 2014. Additionally, in 2019, I co-authored a paper published in PNAS. I was awarded a scholarship by the CNPq of Brazil to pursue a PhD in Cybernetics at the University of Reading, where I developed a toolbox for analyzing neuronal signals. This project combined my skills in programming and neuroscience, resulting in publicly available software. Upon completing my PhD, I joined the Active Touch Laboratory at the University of Sheffield, where I focused on computational neuroscience and neuroprosthetics. My postdoctoral research there earned the best research prize at the INSIGNEO Institute and was published in the journal iScience in 2022. Currently, after one year as a member of the Bayraktar group at the Sanger Institute, University of Cambridge, where I lead the development and implementation of an end-to-end 10× Xenium spatial transcriptomics pipeline, integrating optimized wet-lab protocols with computational modules—including DOT for annotation transfer, SCENIC+ for network inference, and a control-theoretic “minimum dominating set” approach—I joined the Cooper-Knock laboratory to dissect the spatial gene-regulatory drivers of motor neurone disease. This workflow, validated across GBM, spinal cord injury, and ALS models, is fully generalizable to developmental systems, bridging cutting-edge network neuroscience with practical spatial-omics applications. My general research interests include