Cell scientist to watch – Irene Miguel-Aliaga

Irene Miguel-Aliaga left sunny Barcelona to pursue a PhD at Oxford University in the laboratory of Kay Davies. She did her postdoctorate at Harvard University in Stefan Thor's lab, and briefly relocated with him to Sweden before coming back to the UK. She continued her postdoctoral work and developed her current research interests as a Marie Curie Fellow in the lab of Alex Gould at the National Institute for Medical Research in London. She established her own lab at the University of Cambridge in 2008, thanks to a Wellcome Trust Career Development Fellowship. In 2012 she moved to London and is currently a Programme Leader at the Medical Research Council Clinical Sciences Centre and a Reader at Imperial College London. Irene was elected to the EMBO Young Investigator programme and holds an ERC Starting Grant. Her lab investigates how gut cells maintain homeostasis and communicate with cells of other tissues and organs.