By Inés Jiménez
Inés completed her BSc (Hons) in Biomedical Sciences with Professional Experience at the University of Manchester, graduating in 2022 after a year at the Oxford Brain Bank and the Ansorge lab at the University of Oxford. Back in Manchester, she joined the Harte lab and b‑neuro, where she worked on the neuropsychopharmacology of neurodevelopmental disorders. She is now undertaking a PhD in Neuroscience in the Zoupi and Almeida labs at the University of Edinburgh, where she investigates the role of developmental myelination in single CNS neurons, aiming to understand how myelin differentially shapes their morphology, health and function.
Inés was a 2026 Poster Winner at our UK Glia 2026 meeting. We spoke to Inés as part of our 150 voices series.
What impact has being part of the Society had on your career?
Being part of the Physiological Society has had a wonderful impact on my career. Through meetings organised by the Society, I have met and chatted with researchers and professionals from multiple backgrounds and career stages. Some of these conversations were so insightful that they have shaped both my current project and broader career trajectory. In addition, I have attended presentations so well thought out and delivered with such depth that I left feeling even more inspired and enthusiastic about research. These experiences have further motivated me to pursue an academic career after finishing my PhD, shaping my professional future!
Tell us about the meeting you won your poster presentation at?
It was the UK Glia 2026 meeting, held in Bristol this June. It was a fantastic, exceptionally well-organised conference and an incredible opportunity to share my early-career research. The talks were engaging and thought-provoking; I learnt a great deal about non-oligodendrocyte glial cells and heard some of the leading principal investigators in the oligodendroglia field present their latest and groundbreaking work. It was truly inspiring.
The poster sessions were a brilliant opportunity to meet other early-career researchers (ECRs) and chat about their exciting projects! I was fortunate to receive insightful feedback and questions about my own work, too, and winning the poster presentation felt like a great reflection of how much fun I had in the process!
It was an extraordinary meeting, and I cannot wait to join the next UK Glia meeting in 2028!
What was a highlight of the meeting that you’d like to reflect on?
A real highlight of the meeting for me was the poster session. It was clear the organisers had ECRs in mind when planning the schedule, which was surprisingly thoughtful and quite rare. The poster sessions did not overlap with meals or coffee breaks; there was enough time to visit all the posters, speak with most of the presenters, and still properly host people who came to mine.
This apparently small detail made the meeting feel very ECR-inclusive – no one was left behind. I had a fantastic time learning about the impressive projects my fellow ECRs have been working on over the last few years, and I was fortunate to have several insightful discussions about my own work. The atmosphere was warm and enthusiastic, and I was really grateful that we could take our time and fully enjoy the sessions.
What does “the future of physiology” mean to you?
Excitement and possibility!
Where do you hope to see the field — and the Society — 50 years from now?
I am afraid I cannot visualise where the field, or anything else, for that matter, will be that far in the future. However, I do hope that our understanding will have advanced to currently unimaginable levels, with questions we have not yet thought to ask being answered and reshaping our current perspectives. I also hope that this progress will be driven by deep, friendly collaboration across disciplines, models, and laboratories, and I imagine the Society will continue to play a central role in fostering that collaborative community.
What makes you most hopeful about the next chapter for physiology?
As a neuroscientist and trainee physiologist, this feels like an exceptionally exciting moment to be working in these fields. We now have the tools to tackle big, longstanding questions, but we are also beginning to bring a truly physiological perspective into specific branches of neuroscience, allowing us to ask and answer new and exciting types of questions.
I am particularly excited about what this means for understanding the physiological roles of glial cells in neuronal function, and for gaining insight into what these interactions mean for the physiology of the central nervous system. Very niche, I know, but we are only just scratching the surface! There is a huge amount still to discover, and I am genuinely excited to learn from and contribute to such a promising chapter.