Mirko Trajkovski

Mirko Trajkovski is a professor at the University of Geneva and heads its Department of Cell Physiology and Metabolism. His research looks at the molecular mechanisms behind obesity and insulin resistance, with a focus on how fat tissue adapts, the role of the gut microbiota and how the immune system regulates metabolism.

In 2015 his group showed in Cell that cold exposure changes the gut microbiota and that these changes help the body manage its energy balance. A second paper that year, in Nature Medicine, found that depleting the microbiota promotes the browning of white fat and reduces obesity.

Trajkovski earned his PhD in 2005 at the International Max Planck Research School in Dresden and received the Dr Walter Seipp Prize for the best doctoral thesis as well as the Carl Gustav Carus Prize. He was a postdoc at ETH Zurich with Markus Stoffel and in 2012 became a group leader and lecturer at University College London. He moved to Geneva at the end of 2013 with a Swiss National Science Foundation professorship and has since received an ERC Starting Grant in 2014 and an ERC Consolidator Grant in 2019.