Short biography
Alfonso was born in Madrid (Spain) and obtained his undergraduate degree at the Universidad Complutense in Madrid (Spain) in 1977 and, in 1983, a PhD from the University of Chicago, Chicago (USA). After a postdoc with Peter Lawrence at the MRC LMB in Cambridge became a Wellcome Trust Senior Fellow and since 2003 until 2021, has been Professor of Developmental Mechanics in the Department of Genetics of the University of Cambridge, Cambridge (UK) working on developmental biology with the fruit fly (Drosophila) and more recently Embryonic Stem Cells. His interests cover the interface of cell and developmental biology with Physics and Engineering. He is a member of EMBO, has been awarded two ERC Advanced Investigator grants and in 2012 received the Waddington medal of the BSDB for his contributions to british developmental biology.
