Swetha Gowrishankar, PhD

I completed my PhD in cell biology at the National Centre for Biological Sciences, Bangalore, India, in 2012. My thesis work, done under the supervision of Prof. Satyajit Mayor, involved studying mechanisms of lysosome biogenesis in metazoan cells. Using Drosophila cells as a model system, I studied a biosynthetic pathway that helps transport critical lysosomal proteins to the organelle. Since June 2013, I have worked as a post-doctoral associate at Yale University School of Medicine in the laboratories of Dr. Shawn Ferguson and Prof. Pietro DeCamilli. Here, I have been exploring the role for lysosomes in Alzheimer disease pathology using mouse models and primary cultured neurons.