Rate My Professor Tiago Costa

Tiago Dias da Costa is Associate Professor in Bacterial Pathogenesis in the Department of Life Sciences within the Faculty of Natural Sciences at Imperial College London. He leads the Costa Lab, focusing on the structural basis of assembly, regulation, and function of bacterial double-membrane spanning molecular machines. Employing cutting-edge methods including cryo-electron microscopy, X-ray crystallography, and protein cross-linking coupled mass spectrometry, his research elucidates the roles of bacterial secretion systems in antimicrobial resistance propagation via horizontal gene transfer, interbacterial competition, and host infection. The lab's work has yielded landmark discoveries on Type IV secretion systems and phage satellites, contributing significantly to understanding bacterial evolution and pathogenicity mechanisms.

Costa obtained his degree in Biochemistry from the University of Beira Interior in 2003 and PhD in Molecular Microbiology from Umeå University in 2012. After a postdoctoral fellowship at Birkbeck, University of London, he joined Imperial College London as Lecturer in Bacterial Pathogenesis in 2013, progressing to Senior Lecturer and then Associate Professor and Group Leader. He is a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy and recipient of the Biological Structures Group Early Career Prize from the British Crystallographic Association in 2023 for his structural biology contributions. Key publications include the highly cited 'Type IV secretion systems: Advances in structure, function, and activation' (Molecular Microbiology, 2021), 'Structural and functional diversity of type IV secretion systems' (Trends in Microbiology, 2023), 'AI mirrors experimental science to uncover a mechanism of gene transfer crucial to bacterial evolution' (Cell, 2025), 'Chimeric infective particles expand species boundaries in phage satellites' (2025), and 'The assembly of a hybrid type IV secretion system by a Crohn’s disease-associated Escherichia coli strain' (Nature Communications, 2025). His research impacts strategies to combat antibiotic resistance.