Marta Costa

Position

Senior Research Associate

Affiliation

Zoology and Lucy Cavendish College

Keywords

Neuroscience, Connectomics, Brain Mapping, Fruit Flies, Olfaction

I am interested in how animal behaviour is encoded in circuits, with a particular focus on olfaction,and what mechanisms are used to generate both flexibility and redundancy, allowing animals to adapt to their environments.

I am using connectomics to do this, mapping neurons and their connections in a whole fruit fly (Drosophila melanogaster) brain electron microscopy volume. The fly brain, with 100,000 neurons is small enough to allow us to comprehensively map it, while still exhibiting a broad and complex behavioural repertoire that can be functionally tested. This project is an international consortium between groups in the UK and the US and funded by the Wellcome Trust.

I have been interested in pursuing neuroscience research since my undergraduate degree in Biology at the University of Lisbon, Portugal. After completing a MSc Neuroscience at UCL with Jon Clarke, using real-time imaging to analyse zebrafish neurulation, I moved to Cambridge for a PhD. Working in the lab of Pat Simpson, I focused on describing the pathways responsible for the patterning of thoracic bristles in different species of flies.

In 2011, looking to contribute to community resources, I started my first postdoc with the Virtual Fly Brain project (VFB) and later on, also joined FlyBase. Both projects are large research collaborations that collect and integrate Drosophila data (neuronal or genetic, respectively), making it available to the community via a web-based resource. I focused on image analysis and neuroanatomy curation, and in a collaboration with Greg Jefferis (MRC-LMB, University of Cambridge), developed the neuronal similarity algorithm NBLAST, now used by many groups.

Add your profile to the site

If you are an early career cis and trans woman researcher from the University of Cambridge or affiliated institutes, you can add your profile to the site. Fill in this form and we will be in touch.

For anything else, don’t hesitate to reach out by emailing us stepwide.cam@gmail.com.

This website

This website showcases the profiles of early career cis and trans women researchers from the University of Cambridge, UK, and affiliated institutions. It originated as part of StepWide, a leadership programme that aims to support the next generation of female researchers.

We hope that by making the expertise and stories of early career women researchers more visible (and searchable!), will highlight how much they contribute to the research that is done in the University and affiliated institutions.

Who is it for

This website is designed for a wide audience, be it other researchers looking for particular expertise for a collaboration; the media looking for experts; those that are simply curious about what type of research is done in Cambridge, or those trying to get a clearer idea of what a ‘typical’ woman researcher in this years old institution does (there is no ‘typical’!).

The StepWide programme

StepWide was designed by 3 postdocs at Cambridge (see below for more on Marta, Laura and Cemre). It aims to support female postdoctoral researchers at the University of Cambridge, UK, from any discipline, who feel that taking a step into leadership is not for them. The programme is designed to suit both early and more senior postdocs, providing them with the skills to challenge the current ideas of what a leader is, learn how to raise their public profiles, as well as a close and supportive network of peer-to-peer female postdocs.

StepWide ran for the first time in 2019/2021, and we are currently running a new series of workshops in 2022/2023. We will post updates here when applications open for its next run.

Laura, Marta and Cemre (left to right on the photo) met at The Postdocs of Cambridge (PdOC) Society, at the University of Cambridge, UK. When the Researcher Development (RD) Pitch Competition was announced in late 2018, they felt this provided the ideal opportunity to work together to develop a leadership programme for women postdocs. They saw a gap in the current leadership RD provision, with a lack of opportunities that challenge current leadership views. Their proposal was successful and obtained funding for a one year pilot, giving rise to the StepWide programme.

Laura Fachal is a Senior Staff Scientist at Wellcome Sanger Institute. She earned her BS in Veterinary, MSc in Biotechnology and PhD from University of Santiago de Compostela, Spain. She completed her postdoc at the Centre for Cancer Genetic Epidemiology, University of Cambridge. She is also a Research Associate at Lucy Cavendish College.

Marta Costa is a Senior Research Associate at the Department of Zoology. She did her undergrad in Biology in Lisbon, Portugal, followed by an MSc in Neuroscience at UCL in London. She then moved to Cambridge for her PhD, followed by a postdoc. She is also a Research Associate at Lucy Cavendish College.

Cemre Ustunkaya was a Post-doctoral Research Associate at the McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research. She earned her BSc in Biological Science, followed by an MSc in Archaeometry at Middle East Technical University, Turkey. She later moved to Australia for her PhD in Archaeology at The University of Queensland. She is also a postdoc affiliate at Newnham College.

Thanks and funding

StepWide was funded by the Researcher Development Pitch Competition which included support from the Researcher Development Programme, The Postdocs of Cambridge (PdOC) Society, the Postdoc Academy, the Postdoc Chairs’ Network and the Careers Service at the University of Cambridge. We are very thankful for their support. We would also like to thank Alba Gómez for her expert support with the first version of the website, and to Arian Jamasb for redesigning and implementing the newest version of this website. Finally, we thank Natacha Wilson and Rebecca Nestor for the advice and support they provided for the development of the workshops.

Marta Costa mmc46@cam.ac.uk