Cell scientist to watch − Melike Lakadamyali

Melike received a bachelor's degree in physics from the University of Texas at Austin and joined the laboratory of Xiaowei Zhuang at Harvard University for her PhD, which was awarded in 2006. She worked as a postdoctoral fellow under Jeff Lichtman at the Center for Brain Science at Harvard University. In 2010, Melike joined the Institute of Photonic Sciences (ICFO) in Barcelona, Spain, as a junior group leader. She was the recipient of an EMBO Young Investigator Award in 2013 and became senior group leader at the ICFO in 2015. Melike is currently an Assistant Professor of Physiology at the Perelman School of Medicine, University of Pennsylvania. Her work focuses on the development and use of imaging techniques to study cytoskeletal transport mechanisms in cells and neurons, as well as the dynamics and mechanisms of the transcription machinery.