Akira Alexander

Postdoctoral research fellow

Akira loves the intracellular interactions occuring when a pathogen invades its host. This started during his BSc in Plant Biology studying the interactions of plants and their pathogens.

Akira has an MSc in Biotechnology and a PhD in Medical Cell Biology investigating the role of Calcium signalling in the movement of peptides within the cell. During his PhD he became interested in gene editing as a tool for research and has passionately kept learning any novel technique of genetic manipulation.

Akira previously worked at the Medical Research COuncil Centre for Virus Research where he initially was microinjecting mosquito larvae to generate antiviral transgenic mosqitos, before moving into the field of negative strand RNA viruses.

Akira explores the host protein - pathogen protein interactions occuring during infection, which is integral to understanding how the pathogen manipulates the host response during an infection.