Alpha Yap is an Australian Research Council Laureate Fellow. He and his lab seek to understand tissue mechanobiology: how mechanical forces control the behaviour of complex, multicellular tissues in health in disease. Their recent work focuses on characterising the cellular mechanisms that mediate mechanical homeostasis in epithelia, and testing how these support homeostasis against cell death and transformation.
They’ve been helped in this endeavour by the generous support of developmental biologists, physicists, engineers and clinicians. Alpha has led international conferences and the Australia and New Zealand Society for Cell Biology; serves as editor for several international journals; was Division Head at the University of Queensland’s Institute for Molecular Bioscience; and is a Lifetime Fellow of the American Society for Cell Biology. His spare time is occupied by a quixotic attempt to play the piano.
