معرفی
Katelyn Spillane is an Associate Professor in the Department of Life Sciences at Imperial College London, within the Faculty of Natural Sciences. She holds academic affiliations with the Sir Alexander Fleming Building on the South Kensington Campus. Her research focuses on immune cell biology, mechanobiology, and biophysics, with particular emphasis on antigen detection dynamics and immune synapse mechanics in B and T cells. She has a multidisciplinary background spanning physical chemistry, biophysics, and immunology.
Spillane earned a B.S. in Chemistry and B.A. in Music from the University of Massachusetts Amherst (2006), followed by a PhD in Physical Chemistry from the University of California, Berkeley (2011). She held postdoctoral positions at the University of Oxford (NIH fellowship), the MRC National Institute for Medical Research, and the Francis Crick Institute before transitioning to academic roles at King’s College London (2018) and Imperial College London (2024).
Her research investigates how mechanical forces and extracellular matrix rigidity influence immune cell function, antigen extraction, and immunotherapeutic strategies. Key areas include NKG2D-based CAR T cell therapy, antigen retention in germinal centers, and the role of synaptic mechanics in immune discrimination. Her lab develops innovative biophysical tools, such as DNA-based tension sensors, to quantify cellular forces in immune interactions.
Spillane has contributed to over 20 peer-reviewed articles since 2010, with recent work emphasizing tumor immunotherapy, mechanotransduction in immune synapses, and the biophysics of antigen capture. Her research bridges physical sciences and immunology to address fundamental questions in immune cell biology.
