Affiliation: University of Warwick, Warwick Medical School

Dr. Michael Smutny is a cell and developmental biologist and Assistant Professor at the division of Biomedical Sciences at Warwick Medical School (WMS) and a member of the Centre of Mechanochemical Cell Biology (CMCB). Dr. Smutny received his PhD in Molecular Biology from the University of Vienna in 2006 working on DNA tumour virus antigens in the lab of Prof. Erhard Wintersberger. He did his postdoctoral research as an Erwin Schroedinger Fellow at the Institute for Molecular Bioscience at the University of Queensland (2006-2010) with Prof. Alpha Yap studying cell-cell adhesion during tissue homeostasis and at the Institute of Science and Technology Austria (2011-2017) with Prof. Carl-Philipp Heisenberg working on the role of cell and tissue mechanics in zebrafish development. Dr. Smutny and his lab are currently interested to understand mechanochemical feedback mechanisms regulating morphogenesis and cell fate specification during tissue formation in the early zebrafish embryo.