Speaker

A/Prof Samantha Stehbens is a joint Group Leader at the University of Queensland's Australian Institute for Bioengineering and Nanotechnology (AIBN) and Institute for Molecular Bioscience (IMB), and AIBN Interim Director (Research). Their lab focuses on how cells sense, adapt to, and fail under mechanical constraints, a theme addressed through quantitative live-cell imaging, advanced biophysical approaches, and engineered 3D microenvironment models. Their work has described the ‘microtubule mechanostat’, an adaptive mechanical feedback mechanism by which microtubules enable cells to withstand compressive stress while organizing spatiotemporal contractility signaling during confined migration (Ju et al., Nature Cell Biology, 2024). They have since extended these findings to discover that confinement induces ferroptosis through mitochondrial dysfunction, linking physical stress with metabolic cell death pathways ((Zhou et al., Nature Communications, 2025, in collaboration with Congying Wu Lab, Peking University). They have also created a mechanically tunable 3D hydrogel platform linking cell biology with biomaterials to enable improved modelling of cell microenvironments (Enriquez et al., Science Advances, 2025). Together, these discoveries reveal how cells respond to mechanical forces, providing fundamental insight to inform new therapies for chronic diseases such as cancer.

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