Angela Stathopoulos

Angela Stathopoulos is currently a Professor in the Division of Biology & Biological Engineering at the California Institute of Technology located in Pasadena, California USA, where she started her laboratory 18 years ago. Throughout her career, she has studied how transcription factors and signaling pathways influence cells to regulate changes in cell shape and form during the course of development. In 1998, she obtained her Ph.D. from Stanford University in the lab of Martha Cyert studying calcium signalling and the role of the calcineurin phosphatase regulated gene expression. Subsequently, she joined the laboratory of Mike Levine at UC Berkeley for her postdoctoral training in using the Drosophila embryo as a model system to study mechanisms of transcriptional regulation. In her lab at Caltech, a systems-level approach is used to study embryonic development, in which both cis-regulatory and cell biological data are integrated with an emphasis on quantitative measures, to provide insight into the regulation of gene expression, patterning and cell migration. Recent focus has identified a new collective cell migration model system, the caudal visceral mesoderm (CVM) and use of optogenetic approaches to study the dynamic action of transcription factors. In her free time, Angela enjoys spending time with her family (mom to two college students), renovating homes with her husband John (second career choice would have been architect), travelling to new places (near water always a plus), gardening (aspiring), reading historical fiction novels, and is an animal-enthusiast, in general (with pups Stella & Luna topping the list).