Sharon Tooze is a Principal Group leader at the Francis Crick Institute. and is funded by an ERC advanced grant. Sharon Tooze is an EMBO member, a Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences, and holds an ERC advanced grant. 

Sharon Tooze studied for her PhD in molecular cell biology at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) in Heidelberg, Germany. Her post-doctoral work at EMBL initiated her long-standing interest in organelle biogenesis. During her post-doctoral work she uncovered the mechanisms by which nascent neuroendocrine secretory granules are formed and released from the trans-Golgi network in a pathway parallel to bulk secretion. Sharon maintained her interest in the biogenesis of secretory granules when she moved to the Imperial Cancer Research Fund in London, later the Cancer Research UK London Research Institute and now part of the Francis Crick Institute. 

Since 2006, her lab has identified and investigated the function of several key mammalian autophagy proteins (ULK1, ATG13, ATG9, WIPI2) and the work contines to contribute to the current understanding of autophagy at the molecular cell biology level, and increasingly focused on biochemistry and structural approaches. Her current work on the early stages of autophagosome formation, and focus on ATG9A, ULK1, and WIPI2, the elucidation of mechanisms involved in membrane expansion, phagophore composition, and the recruitment and function of the ATG8 protein family.