Derek K. Toomre, Ph.D.

Derek K. Toomre, Ph.D., assistant professor of cell biology, has received a $2.5 million five-year New Innovator Award from the National Institutes of Health. Toomre will use the funding to develop a new generation of total internal reflection fluorescence microscopes to analyze trafficking and signaling at the cell cortex, a structure inside the cell membrane involved in the cell’s mechanical support and movement. Toomre’s group will apply this technology to understand the trafficking pathways that regulate insulin-stimulated delivery of glucose transporters to the cell surface—a process disrupted in type 2 diabetes.