Kristina Stapornwongkul
Kristina Stapornwongkul recently established her independent research group at the Institute of Molecular Biotechnology (IMBA) in Vienna, where her lab will study the influence of a cell’s metabolic state on patterning, morphogenesis, and cell fate decisions.
Kristina studied biological sciences at the University of Konstanz before pursuing a master’s degree in molecular biosciences, majoring in developmental biology at Heidelberg University. She completed her doctoral research at the Francis Crick Institute and University College London, where she engineered artificial morphogen systems in Drosophila to demonstrate that protein gradients can form through diffusion-based mechanisms. This thesis was recognized by multiple awards, including the Beddington Medal of the British Society for Developmental Biology and the International Birnstiel Award.
For her postdoc, Kristina joined the labs of Vikas Trivedi and Miki Ebisuya at EMBL Barcelona. There, she applied stem-cell-derived gastruloids to explore how metabolic states shape developmental signaling and germ layer formation. Her work revealed that glucose levels can act as instructive cues for cell fate decisions during gastrulation, highlighting metabolism as an active regulator rather than a passive background process.
In her own group at IMBA, Kristina will combine metabolic profiling, stem cell–based models of human gastrulation and neural tube development, and novel imaging approaches to study the intersection of metabolism, signaling, and morphogenesis. Taking together functional experiments on in vitro model systems and data from clinical samples on human pregnancies, the long term goal is to better understand the nutritional environment during early embryonic development, dissect the influence of maternal diet, and gain insight on the association with congenital defects and metabolic disorders.
Check out her lab website here
