Microtubules are essential for chromosome segregation, intracellular transport, positioning of organelles, directed cell migration and differentiation. All these processes require the organisation of microtubules into arrays with different geometry and density and the proper regulation of dynamics and interactions at the microtubule ends. My lab focuses on the mechanisms that generate specific microtubule arrays in polarised cells, the dynamic interactions of microtubule tips with intracellular structures and the cell cortex to control cell shape changes and the transport along microtubule arrays mediated by dynein and kinesins. To do this we combine quantitative live cell imaging approaches with in vitro reconstitution assays

After a Diploma in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology from the University of Hamburg, Germany, I joined the lab of Gero Steinberg at the Ludwig Maximilian University in Munich and later at the Max Planck Institute for Terrestrial Microbiology in Marburg. For my PhD project I studied the microtubule cytoskeleton in the fungus Ustilago maydis, concentrating in particular on the dynamic re-organisation of microtubules during the cell cycle and on intracellular transport by the molecular motors dynein and kinesin, which carry traffic along microtubules. I then moved as a Postdoctoral Fellow of the Emmy Noether programme of the German Science Foundation (DFG) to the Wellcome Trust Centre for Cell Biology in Edinburgh, where I worked with Andreas Merdes on the microtubule cytoskeleton in differentiating muscle cells. In 2007, after three years in Edinburgh, I started my own lab at the Marie Curie Research Institute (MCRI) in Oxted, Surrey. When the MCRI closed in 2010, I moved with my colleagues Rob Cross and Andrew McAinsh to the University of Warwick to found the Centre for Mechanochemical Cell Biology. I won a Lister Institute Research Prize in 2013, a Wellcome Investigator Award in 2016 and 2022 and became a Professor in 2020.