Dr Vito Mennella MS, PhD
Associate Professor of Cell Biology and Translational Medicine
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Dr Vito Mennella is an Associate Professor of Cell Biology and Translational Medicine and member of the Primary Ciliary Dyskinesia (PCD) research group in the Faculty of Medicine at University of Southampton and NHS diagnostic service at University Hospital Southampton Trust.
Dr Vito Mennella’s laboratory tackles fundamental questions in basic and translational research of cilia and centrosomes by leveraging expertise in mechanistic cell biology and biophysical imaging technologies.
Dr. Mennella received his B.Sc. cum laude from the University La Sapienza in Rome, Italy. After receiving a Fulbright Fellowship to continue his studies in the US he obtained his Ms and PhD in Physiology and Biophysics at Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York, where he discovered the cellular mechanism of microtubule depolymerization mediated by Kinesin-13s and studied the mechanism of their regulation (Mennella et al, Nature Cell Biology, 2005; Journal of Cell Biology, 2008).
From there, Dr. Mennella joined the Howard Hughes Medical Institute lab of Dr. David Agard at the University of California San Francisco as a postdoctoral fellow, where he trained in super-resolution microscopy and advanced imaging methods for studying organelle cell biology, in particular of centrosome and cilia. At UCSF, Dr. Mennella was first to describe the architecture of the Pericentriolar Material of centrosomes, debunking a long-standing assumption of its solely amorphous nature (Mennella et al, Nature Cell Biology, 2012; Trends in Cell Biology, 2014)
In 2014, Dr. Mennella became an Assistant Professor in the Biochemistry Department at University of Toronto, where he applied advanced imaging methods for increasing sensitivity of diagnosis of lung disease motile ciliopathy Primary Ciliary Dyskinesia (PCD) and for characterizing novel cellular structures (Sydor et al. Trends in Cell Biology, 2015; Sydor et al. Elife, 2018; Liu et al, Science Translational Medicine, 2020).
In 2019, Dr. Mennella became tenured Associate Professor in the National Research Health Center and Biomedical Research center at U of Southampton. Dr. Mennella has received external funding from Canadian Institute of Health Research (CIHR), National Sciences and Engineering Council of Canada and new investigator awards from CIHR Institute of Human Development and Child Health, the ATS-PCD foundation, AAIR and other charities.
Qualifications
- MS and PhD, Physiology and Biophysics, Albert Einstein College of Medicine, New York City, 2002-2008
Appointments held
- Postdoc, HHMI, University of California San Francisco, 2008-2014
- Assistant Professor, University of Toronto, 2014-2018
- Associate Professor, University of Southampton, 2019-