Alpha Yap is a Professor and Head of the Division of Molecular Cell Biology at the Institute for Molecular Bioscience, The University of Queensland. After training in Internal Medicine, Endocrinology and Cell Physiology, he undertook post-doctoral research with Barry Gumbiner at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center before returning to Australia to establish his independent research group. His laboratory studies the cellular mechanisms responsible for cadherin-dependent morphogenesis, notably the mechanisms and principles that coordinate cadherin adhesion with the cytoskeleton. He was Chair of the 2011 Gordon Research Conference on Cell Contact & Adhesion and will chair the 2016 GRC on Signaling by Adhesion Receptors. He currently serves on the editorial boards of several journals, amongst them Molecular Biology of the Cell, Developmental Cell and Current Biology. He is the recipient of the 2013 President's Medal of the Australia and New Zealand Society for Cell and Developmental Biology.