Direna Alonso-Curbelo is a Group Leader at the Institute for Research in Biomedicine (IRB Barcelona). Dr. Alonso-Curbelo graduated in Pharmacy at the University Complutense of Madrid and pursued her Ph.D. at the Spanish National Cancer Center (CNIO), studying lineage-specific mechanisms of cancer cell plasticity.During her postdoc at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center (MSKCC), she combined innovative mouse models, functional genetics tools, and genomics methods to understand how genetic mutations and tissue cues shape cell identity programs in cancer. Since January 2022, Dr. Alonso-Curbelo leads the ´Inflammation, Tissue Plasticity & Cancer´ group at the IRB Barcelona. Through a multidisciplinary approach, her lab combines single-cell (epi)genomics, in vivo mouse modeling, and CRISPR/RNA approaches to understand the molecular, cellular, and tissue determinants of neoplastic transformation and tumor immune evasion, focusing on pancreatic and liver cancers. Her recent work revealed how genetics (oncogenic KRAS) and tissue damage cooperate to drive aberrant chromatin states that fuel cancer development (Nature 2021), epigenetic determinants of senescence immunosurveillance (Cancer Discovery 2023), and tissue-level interactions connecting epigenetic plasticity with pro-tumor inflammation (Science 2023). During her trajectory to date, Dr. Alonso-Curbelo has received over 10 national and international awards, including the Blavatnik Regional Award for Young.