Dr. Maria Balda

Biography

Maria S. Balda graduated from the University of Buenos Aires, Argentina. She received the Prize for young scientist from the Argentinean Mexican Council. Maria obtained her PhD at the Marcelino Cereijido Centre for Advanced Studies in Mexico, where she developed a passion for cell-cell junctional complexes. She then achieved the Anna Fuller Postdoctoral Fellowship at Yale University, working with James Anderson. Her early research contributed to the identification of the sequence of the tight junction protein, ZO-1, and further studies identified the signal transduction mechanisms that guide tight junction assembly and function. In 2000, Maria became a Group Leader at University College London’s Institute of Ophthalmology, where she identified and characterized types of novel tight junction proteins. Her research interests center on understanding the molecular mechanisms of cell-cell junctions involved in health and disease, and she applies her knowledge to develop therapeutic tools aimed at reversing disease conditions related to proliferative and degenerative eye diseases and tumorigenesis. Maria has served as a committee member for the British Society for Cell Biology and is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Biology. She is also an associate editor for various journals, and her scientific publications have accrued 18,000 citations, reflecting a remarkable research career with an h-index of 63.

Research Interests

Experience