Dr Geraldine Jowett

Dr Geraldine Jowett studies the biophysics of mammalian gamete sex determination. Her research is hosted by Prof Azim Surani (Gurdon Institute) and Prof Ewa Paluch (PDN), allowing her to harness interdisciplinary tools to study the forces that drive progression of bipotential germ cells toward sperm or egg fate, both at the tissue scale and on the molecular level.

Dr Jowett completed her B.A. in human developmental and regenerative biology at Harvard University in 2014, then pursued her interest in modelling human biology as Wellcome Trust PhD student in Cell Therapies and Regenerative Medicine at King’s College London with Dr Eileen Gentleman and Dr Joana Neves. Here, she developed complex co-culture systems of innate lymphoid cells and mucosal organoids in 3D synthetic hydrogels. She harnessed this approach to uncover how this sentinel immune population develops and interacts with the epithelium in the context of Inflammatory Bowel Disease (Jowett et al., 2021, 2022). She was awarded a Schmidt Science Fellowship and St John’s College CRA to pivot into the field of reproductive development in 2021, and has continued this work as a Sir Henry Wellcome Fellow since 2022. Working in both mouse and human systems, she hopes that her findings could advance artificial reproductive technologies (ART) to include in vitro gametogenesis (IVG) for queer or infertile couples and those who have previously suffered from childhood cancers.