Laura Alonso is currently Associate Professor of Medicine and Director of Beta Cell Biological Studies at the University of Massachusetts Medical School, in the Department of Medicine, Division of Diabetes. She received her undergraduate degree from Harvard in Biochemistry, and her medical diploma from the University of Pennsylvania. She performed her clinical training in Internal Medicine at the University of Chicago, followed by a fellowship in Endocrinology and Metabolism, also at the University of Chicago. Her training in the basic sciences began during a summer internship with Dr. Eleanor Blakely at the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory, continued during her undergraduate and medical education with Dr. John Dowling and Dr. Laurence Turka, respectively, and intensified during a five-year postdoctoral fellowship with Dr. Elaine Fuchs which began at the University of Chicago and was completed at the Rockefeller University. Training in Islet Biology commenced with her move to the University of Pittsburgh, where she trained with Dr. Andrew Stewart.

Dr. Alonso sees patients in the Diabetes Clinic in the Ambulatory Care Center at the University of Massachusetts, University Campus, as well as rounding on the inpatient Diabetes and Endocrinology Consult service.

Dr. Alonso's research lab is focused on finding ways to increase the number of insulin-secreting pancreatic beta cells, so as to prevent or treat diabetes. She uses mouse models to determine how nutrients influence beta cell proliferation, with the goal of identifying therapeutic pathways that can be exploited to expand human beta cell mass.