Professor Stefan Trapp

Stefan Trapp is Professor of Autonomic Neuroscience and Metabolic Disease at UCL. He obtained his PhD from the University of Göttingen in Germany establishing the importance of ATP-sensitive K+ channels in the excitability of vagal neurons. Subsequently he moved to the University of Oxford to work with Professor Frances Ashcroft on the molecular structure-function relation of these ion channels. In 2003, Professor Trapp established his own laboratory at Imperial College London with seminal work on brainstem glucosensing and brain GLP-1. Ten years later he moved to UCL to found the Centre for Cardiovascular and Metabolic Neuroscience together with Professor Alexander Gourine. For the past two decades he has been working on the brain circuitry controlling energy balance. His work has spearheaded the investigation of brain-produced GLP-1 and its role on the regulation of food intake. A core interest of his research group is to unravel the physiology that underpins the clinical success of GLP-1-based therapies in metabolic disease and beyond.