My name is Noor Fatima Rafiq. I have a BSc in Molecular Genetics from the University of Edinburgh. After my bachelors I was part of the Covid surveillance team at the Wellcome Sanger institute. Currently I am a PhD student in Bénédicte Sanson’s lab in the department of physiology, development and neuroscience at the University of Cambridge. I am using Drosophila embryos as a model to study epithelial morphogenesis. My research project focuses on role and mechanism behind the proteolytic cleavage of Sidekick, which is the first tricellular adherence junction protein to be characterised in invertebrates.