{{short description|American cancer research scientist}} {{Use dmy dates|date=April 2022}} '''Laura Marie Machesky''' {{Post-nominals|country=GBR|size=100%|FRSE|FMedSci}} (born 13 August 1965) is a British-American cancer research scientist. She is the Sir William Dunn Professor of Biochemistry in the Department of Biochemistry, University of Cambridge, and the current president of the British Society for Cell Biology.
==Early life and education== Machesky was born on 13 August 1965 in Dearborn, Michigan, United States. She studied at Alma College, graduating with a Bachelor of Science (BSc) degree in 1987, and then at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine where she completed her Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) degree in 1993.<ref name="WWW">{{cite web |title=Machesky, Prof. Laura Marie, (born 13 Aug. 1965), Sir William Dunn Professor of Biochemistry, since 2022, and Co-Chair, Engineering Biology Interdisciplinary Research Centre, since 2022, University of Cambridge; Fellow, Robinson College, Cambridge, since 2022 |url=http://www.ukwhoswho.com/view/article/oupww/whoswho/U297310 |website=Who's Who 2024 |publisher=Oxford University Press |access-date=2 November 2024 |language=en |date=1 December 2023}}</ref>
== Career == Machesky was a postdoc at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology (LMB) from 1995 to 1997 and then an MRC Career Development Fellow, MRC Senior Research Fellow and Professor of Cell Biology at the School of Biosciences, University of Birmingham from 1998 to 2007.<ref>{{Cite web |last=Milbourne |first=Dr S. |date=2023-01-16 |title=Laura Machesky |url=https://www.mrc-tox.cam.ac.uk/staff/laura-machesky |access-date=2023-07-14 |website=www.mrc-tox.cam.ac.uk |language=en}}</ref><ref name=":0">{{Cite web|date=2020-08-24|title=Professor Laura Marie Machesky FRSE, FMedSci|url=https://www.rse.org.uk/fellow/laura-machesky/|access-date=2020-09-16|website=The Royal Society of Edinburgh|language=en-GB}}</ref><ref name=":1">{{Cite web|title=Professor Laura Machesky {{!}} The Academy of Medical Sciences|url=https://acmedsci.ac.uk/fellows/fellows-directory/ordinary-fellows/fellow/Professor-Laura-Machesky-0009131|access-date=2020-09-16|website=acmedsci.ac.uk}}</ref> She was a Medical Research Council (MRC) senior research fellow and Professor of Cell Biology at the Beatson Institute for Cancer Research in Glasgow from 2007 to 2022, and director of the Institute of Cancer Sciences at the University of Glasgow from 2020 to 2022. She moved to Cambridge University in 2022 as Sir William Dunn Professor of Biochemistry.<ref name="WWW" />
== Research interests == Machesky's research group specialises in cancer cell migration, invasion, metastasis and the energetics of cell biology. She discovered the 7-subunit Arp2/3 complex and showed that this was a major regulator of actin dynamics and cell migration. According to the Academy of Medical Sciences, this work "changed the way the field understood fundamental principles of signalling to actin dynamics and impacted on biomedical problems such as host-pathogen interactions, endocytic trafficking, phagocytosis and cancer cell invasion".<ref name=":1" />
== Awards and honours == Machesky was elected as a Member of the European Molecular Biology Organisation in 2012,<ref>{{cite web |last1=Katja |title=Find a member |url=http://clone.embo.org/members/find-a-member |access-date=2020-09-16 |website=EMBO }}{{Dead link|date=August 2025 |bot=InternetArchiveBot |fix-attempted=yes }}</ref> a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh in 2014,<ref name=":0" /> and a Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences in 2016.<ref name=":1" /> Her husband Robert Insall is also a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh<ref>{{Cite web|title=Couple have become fellows|url=https://www.glasgowtimes.co.uk/news/13278778.couple-have-become-fellows/|access-date=2021-05-24|website=Glasgow Times|language=en}}</ref> and is currently Professor of Computational Biology at University College London.<ref>{{cite web |title=Prof Robert Insall |url=https://profiles.ucl.ac.uk/96659-robert-insall |access-date=20 May 2025}}</ref>
== References == {{reflist}}
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Machesky, Laura}} Category:Living people Category:Fellows of the Royal Society of Edinburgh Category:Fellows of the Academy of Medical Sciences (United Kingdom) Category:1965 births Category:20th-century American biochemists Category:21st-century American biochemists Category:20th-century American women biochemists Category:21st-century American women biochemists Category:British women biochemists Category:British biochemists