I am a Principal Investigator at the Department of Pathology, University of Cambridge, awarded a 4-year Departmental Research Fellowship in 2014. My research addresses small GTPase mechanisms at the membrane, how they operate the actin cytoskeleton and membrane transport, and how they underlie decisive interactions with bacterial pathogens during host cell infections.
In particular, I have been investigating a novel cooperation between membrane-anchored Rho and Arf GTPases in the control of the WAVE regulatory complex (WRC), a pivotal mediator of actin filament polymerisation at the membrane, and how bacterial pathogens subvert small GTPase crosstalk to establish infections. I also have a project examining the mechanisms by which bacterial genotoxins intoxicate susceptible cells to manipulate cell cycle progression, a virulence strategy implicated in infection-associated oncogenesis.