Professor Begoña Heras is the Head of the Structural Biology and Bacterial Pathogenesis laboratory and leads the Infection and Immunity Theme at the La Trobe Institute for Molecular Science. Her specialist interest is in the area of infectious diseases with a focus on dissecting the protein machineries that drive bacterial infections. She has established a research program that integrates structural biology, protein chemistry, biochemistry and molecular biology, to examine the structure and function of proteins that play central roles in bacterial diseases. Informed by the new mechanistic knowledge her laboratory develops inhibitors that block bacterial pathogenesis, which represent a new strategy that promises to transform the way we treat bacterial infections that are no longer susceptible to antibiotics. Her research is regularly published in top ranking journals including Nature Communications, PNAS, Antioxid Redox Signal, Angew Chem Int Ed Engl, and J Biol Chem, and her work is consistently supported by ARC and NHMRC grant funding.

Short Bio
Begoña has developed her research career at top international research institutions, including completing her PhD in Organic Chemistry at the University of Navarra (Spain), postdoctoral research positions at the John Innes Centre (UK) and the University of Queensland (Australia), along with carrying out research exchange visits at ETH (Switzerland) and the University of Michigan (USA). In 2012 she obtained a La Trobe Institute for Molecular Science (LIMS) Fellowship to start her independent laboratory at La Trobe University. In 2013 she was awarded an ARC Future Fellowship, and was promoted to Associate Professor 2019 and Professor in 2023.

Collaborations
Prof Heras has built an extensive network of national and international collaborators, including:
National: Prof Mark Schembri (University of Queensland); A/Prof Makrina Totsika (Queensland University of Technology); Prof Jennifer Martin AC FAA (Griffith), Prof Martin Scanlon (Monash University), Dr Denisse Leyton (Australian National University), A/Prof. Maria Liaskos (Melbourne University); A/Prof. Yuning Hong (La Trobe University); A/Prof. Belinda Abbott (La Trobe University); Prof Rob Pike (La Trobe University).
International: Prof. Mickaël Desvaux (Université Clermont Auvergne, France); Prof. Maria Fillat (University of Zaragoza, Spain); Prof. Jim Bardwell (University of Michigan, USA); Prof Rudi Glockshuber (ETH Zurich); Prof. Jon Beckwith (Harvard Medical School, USA).