Professor Laura Machesky is currently the Sir William Dunn Professor of Biochemistry, having recently moved to Cambridge from the University of Glasgow. Her group uses cell biology and pancreatic cancer models to study actin dynamics, adhesion and membrane trafficking and how these fundamental cell processes guide migration, cancer invasion and metastasis. Her group is interested in how pancreatic cancer cells sense physical parameters of their environment and adapt their signaling and metabolic flux in response to environmental stimuli. She collaborates with bioengineers and physicists to develop reproducible and tuneable tools for modelling normal and cancerous cell and tissue function. She is currently a fellow of Robinson College, President of the British Society for Cell Biology, a member of the European Molecular Biology Organisation and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh and the Academy of Medical Sciences.