Rate My Professor Alpha Yap

Professor Alpha Yap is a Professor and ARC Laureate Fellow at the Institute for Molecular Bioscience, University of Queensland, where he leads the Yap Group focused on cadherin cell-cell adhesion and tissue organisation in health and disease. A University of Queensland alumnus, he obtained a Bachelor of Medical Science, a Bachelor of Medicine and Bachelor of Surgery with Honours, and a Doctor of Philosophy. He is also a Fellow of the Royal Australasian College of Physicians. Yap's research investigates how epithelial cells generate, sense, and propagate mechanical forces at cadherin-based adherens junctions to regulate tissue homeostasis, responses to injury and inflammation, and processes in cancer such as the expulsion of transformed cells. His lab employs multidisciplinary methods including quantitative live-cell microscopy, biophysical assays, zebrafish models, and computational theory to explore these mechanisms in contexts like breast, colon, and prostate cancers.

Professor Yap's distinguished career includes NHMRC Senior Research Fellowships (2005-2009 and 2010-2012), an NHMRC Research Fellowship on Cadherin Biology in Morphogenesis and Disease (2013-2017), and the R Douglas Wright Biomedical Career Development Award (1999). He currently holds an ARC Laureate Fellowship (2024-2028) entitled 'Forces in Nature: Tissue mechanics and cell sociology.' Key discoveries encompass E-cadherin's function as an adhesion-activated signalling receptor that engages the small GTPase Rac, PI3-kinase, and the Arp2/3 complex to direct actin assembly and control cell motility and shape. Yap has produced 299 scholarly works, including recent high-impact papers such as 'Adherens junctions as molecular regulators of emergent tissue mechanics' (Nature Reviews Molecular Cell Biology, 2023), 'Talking with force at cell–cell adhesions' (Nature Cell Biology, 2024), 'Viscous dissipation in the rupture of cell-cell contacts' (Nature Materials, 2025), and 'New directions in epithelial mechanoadaptation' (Current Opinion in Cell Biology, 2025). He supervises PhD candidates on epithelial mechanobiology and has earned further recognition including the Australia and New Zealand Society for Cell and Developmental Biology President's Medal (2013) and election as a Fellow of the American Society for Cell Biology (2021).