Alejandra Catala PhD

Prof Alejandra Tomas is a Professor of Cell Biology and Head of Section of Cell Biology and Functional Genomics at the Department of Metabolism, Digestion and Reproduction, Imperial College London. She obtained her PhD in Biochemistry at University College London in 2003, where she worked on the elucidation of the cellular roles of the calcium- and membrane-binding family of annexin proteins. She then took up a postdoctoral position at the University of Geneva Medical School, Switzerland, where she analysed diverse aspects of the regulation of insulin secretion in pancreatic beta cells, primarily related to the role of the cytoskeleton in insulin exocytosis and the relationship between the secretory and endocytic pathways.

In 2009, she joined the Department of Biochemistry at the University of Geneva, where she focused on the study of receptor trafficking along the endocytic pathway, an area of research she continued to develop back at UCL following her return to the UK in 2011. In 2015, Alejandra was awarded a New Investigator Research Grant by the MRC to set up an independent research group at Imperial to study the role of membrane receptor trafficking in the modulation of signalling and function of pancreatic beta cells. Since then, her laboratory has pursued a number of investigations related to the study of the spatiotemporal regulation of signalling of the GLP-1 receptor and other key receptors involved in the control of blood glucose levels and related metabolic parameters. She is also a Director of the MSc Applied Genomics course and of the Imperial Membrane Receptor and Diabetes Networks of Excellence.