Alexandra Naba

Alexandra Naba is an Associate Professor in the Department of Physiology and Biophysics at the University of Illinois Chicago and a member of the University of Illinois Cancer Center.

Alexandra, a Parisian native, received her Ph.D. from the Curie Institute in Paris, France where she studied the role of the membrane-cytoskeleton linker, ezrin, in normal and tumor cell adhesion in the laboratory of Pr. Daniel Louvard under the supervision of Dr. Monique Arpin. 

For her postdoctoral training, Alexandra joined the laboratory of Richard Hynes at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. At MIT, Alexandra developed novel proteomic and bioinformatic methods to study the molecular composition of the ECM, pioneering the field of "matrisomics".

In 2016, Alexandra established the Naba Lab for ECM Research in the Department of Physiology and Biophysics at the University of Illinois Chicago (UIC) where her team continues to study the roles of the ECM in development, health, and disease, with a focus on cancer. Her lab made major contributions to ECM research through the development of the Matrisome Project and their contribution to MatrixDB, the ECM interaction database.

Alexandra has published over 60 publications and has received numerous awards including the 2018 Junior Investigator award from the American Society for Matrix Biology (ASMB) and the 2018 Rupert Timpl award from the International Society for Matrix Biology (ISMB). She is also the recipient of the 2018 UIC College of Medicine Rising Star award and the 2024 UIC College of Medicine Departmental Faculty of the Year award. In 2020, Alexandra received the Philip L. Hawley Distinguished Faculty award, presented by the students of the UIC Department of Physiology and Biophysics to faculty embodying “supportiveness, enthusiasm, and sincerity”.