Ewa Paluch
Professor of Anatomy at University of Cambridge
Ewa Paluch graduated in Physics from the Ecole Normale Supérieure in Lyon in 2001 and did a PhD in Biophysics at the Curie Institute in Paris between 2001 to 2005. She started her research group in 2006 at the Max Planck Institute of Molecular Cell Biology and Genetics in Dresden as a joint appointment with the IIMCB, Warsaw. In 2013, she was appointed Professor of Cell Biophysics at the MRC LMCB, University College London. In 2018 she was elected Chair of Anatomy at the University of Cambridge. Ewa is the 19th Professor of Anatomy at Cambridge, and the first woman to hold this Chair in its 300-year history. She has received a number of awards, including the Hooke Medal from the British Society for Cell Biology in 2017 and the Blavatnik Award for Young Scientists in the UK in 2019, and was elected EMBO member in 2018. Ewa received an ERC Starting Grant in 2012, an ERC Consolidator grant in 2018 and an ERC Synergy grant in 2025. Ewa's lab combines cell biology, mechanobiology, quantitative imaging and modelling to investigate the principles underlying cellular shape control. Key questions the lab investigates include how cellular shapes and tissue architectures are both robust and adaptable, how cells control their own mechanics and sense the mechanical properties of their surroundings, and how cell shape and fate are coupled during cellular transitions.