Karolina Rygiel

Karolina started her scientific journey with a 1st Class Hons Master’s Degree in Molecular Biology at Jagiellonian University, Poland. She then pursued a PhD at Newcastle University in applied immunobiology, where she researched epithelial-to-mesenchymal transition in autoimmune liver disease. Her interests later shifted to the neuromuscular system, where she studied mitochondrial and immune changes in sarcopenia and age-related myopathies such as Inclusion Body Myositis, as a Research Associate in Professor Sir Doug Turnbull’s Wellcome Trust Centre for Mitochondrial Disease. Following a seven-year post-doc, Karolina changed trajectory from academia to industry by joining Immunocore, first as a Publication Manager and later as a Senior Scientist. Her four years at the biotech immersed her in the field of cancer immunotherapy, where she developed a particular interest in spatial biology, working with a multiparametric tissue imaging platform. In 2020, Karolina took up a Senior Scientist/Project Coordinator position at the University of Oxford to further pursue drug discovery, this time in the area of small molecules. Following a career break due to family expansion, she resumed active research in 2025 when she was awarded a three-year Daphne Jackson Fellowship funded by the Royal Society. Karolina also successfully secured additional funds from the John Fell Fund and the local charity Occtopus. Her project focuses on establishing spatial immunopeptidomics in colorectal cancer as a method to aid the identification and validation of oncology targets for immunotherapy.