Tiago Costa is an Associate Professor at Imperial College London, where he leads the Structural Microbiology research group within the Centre for Bacterial Resistance Biology and the Department of Life Sciences. His research focuses on the structural and mechanistic basis of horizontal gene transfer and protein secretion in bacteria.
Trained as a molecular microbiologist, he subsequently specialised in cryo-electron microscopy during postdoctoral research, yielding key structural and functional insights into the molecular machinery that mediates DNA and protein transport.
Since establishing his laboratory in 2017, Costa has built a multidisciplinary programme integrating structural biology, microbiology and AI-driven approaches. His group has defined fundamental principles underlying bacterial conjugation, toxin secretion and phage–host interactions, authoring over 40 primary research articles alongside reviews and book chapters.
His work is supported by major funders, including the Wellcome Trust, the Medical Research Council and the National Institutes of Health. In 2023, he was awarded the Early Career Prize from the British Crystallographic Association, and in 2025, the Wellcome Trust Discovery Award.