John Vakonakis
University of Oxford, UK
Biography
John (Ioannis) Vakonakis did a PhD in Biochemistry at Texas A&M University, where he pioneered the structural analysis of bacterial circadian clock proteins. His postdoctoral work at the University of Oxford focused on the structural mechanisms underpinning cell adhesion and assembly of the extracellular matrix in animals. John did breakthrough work on the molecular architecture of the centriole organelle during a second postdoc at the Swiss Light Source, prior to starting his own lab in Oxford Biochemistry. He has been a Marie Currie Fellow, Junior Research Fellow at Trinity College, Oxford, and a Wellcome Trust Research Fellow. John is now Associate Professor in Structural Biology and Biophysics at the University of Oxford, and Fellow in Biochemistry at Lincoln College. Over the last six years his research aims to understand how large molecular machines form in cells, such as the cytoadherence assemblies created upon P. falciparum-infection of human erythrocytes.