Irene Diaz
BSc (UAM), MA (UAM), PhD (UAM)
College roles
Postdoctoral Affiliate
Postgraduate Mentor
Biography
Dr Irene Diaz is a postdoctoral researcher in Juliette Fedry's group at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology. Her work focuses on understanding how proteins are made and how this process shapes the response to different cellular stresses.
Before moving to Cambridge for her postdoc, Dr Irene Diaz studied biochemistry and obtained her BSc from Universidad Autonoma, in Madrid, Spain. During her degree, Dr Irene Diaz became interested in understanding the process of protein synthesis and moved to the laboratory of Dr. Ivan Ventoso at CBMO institute (Madrid), where she completed her MSc and PhD. During this period Dr Irene Diaz acquired technical expertise in cell and molecular biology techniques, focusing on the study of protein synthesis. After her PhD, Dr. Irene Diaz moved to Cambridge to learn structure biology as a postdoc in the laboratory of the Nobel laureate Prof. Venki Ramakrishnan. She got an EMBO postdoctoral fellowship to study the structure of the ribosome, the molecular machine that translates genetic information into proteins.
Research Interests
Dr Irene Diaz is interested in studying protein synthesis and the ribosome. Dr Irene Diaz is using the powerful combination of the cellular biology background with the structural biology expertise to address open questions in the protein synthesis field.
She works on understanding how cells can response to stress. Specifically, she is interested in how the regulation of protein translation and protein homeostasis is related with survival when cells are exposed to different types of stress. Understanding the mechanism of stress response in detail is extremely important as its dysregulation is involved in many human diseases.
Image credit: MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology