Career overview
Current appointment
Associate Professor at Imperial College London, Department of Infectious Disease, from November 2024
Previous appointments
Principal Investigator at UCL Institute of Prion Diseases; Senior Research Fellow at UCL MRC Prion Unit; postdoctoral research positions at Birkbeck College London and the University of Oxford
Education
PhD in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at Prof. Hideaki Nagase’s lab, Imperial College London, with research placements at Prof. Jan Enghild’s lab, Aarhus University, Denmark (1 year), and Prof. Keith Brew’s lab at Florida Atlantic University, USA (1 month); MRes and BSc training at Prof. Jan Potempa’s lab, Jagiellonian University, with ERASMUS fellowship at Aarhus University, Denmark
Highlights
Polymathy
Research spanning microbial proteomics (mass spectrometry), enzymology (X-ray crystallography, ITC), extracellular matrix biology, cytoskeletal dynamics (TIRFM), structural biology (HDX-MS and cryo-EM/ET), prion biology and neurodegeneration, synthetic and chemical biology (genetic code expansion, bio-orthogonal labeling and live-cell imaging)
Recognition
Invited and keynote speaker at international meetings in structural biology, biophysics, neurodegeneration, protein aggregation, and infectious disease
Funding
MRC Career Development Award Fellow and recipient of CJD Foundation grants
Publications across multiple fields, from collagen remodelling and microtubule dynamics to prion structure, strain diversity, and imaging of protein misfolding in living cells
Leadership
Teaching & curriculum development: Stream Lead and Lecturer for MRes in Biomedical Research (Molecular Basis of Human Disease), MSci Curriculum Development Working Group member for Health Priority (Alzheimer’s Disease) at Imperial, Lecturer on Neurobiology of Brain Injury and Disease, postgraduate taught at UCL (2022 – 2025); Academic Lead (PI) for Imperial's iGEM 2026 team; Mentor for a BBSRC Fellow
Contact
Email
smanka@ic.ac.uk