Sarah Shahmoradian, Ph.D.

Principal Investigator

Dr. Shahmoradian received her Ph.D. in Molecular Physiology and Biophysics from the Baylor College of Medicine in 2013 working in the lab of Wah Chiu (now Stanford University), where she applied cryo-electron microscopy (cryo-EM) and tomography (cryo-ET) to uncover new structural mechanisms and features of neurodegenerative-relevant proteins. 

She completed her Roche Postdoctoral fellowship in the lab of Henning Stahlberg at the Biozentrum University of Basel, discovering that membranes and lipidic material are abundant in Lewy bodies and Lewy neurites (LB/LN) of Parkinson's diseased-human brains. This caused a major re-evaluation of in vitro modeling of their formation, and emphasizes aberrant alpha synuclein-lipid interactions in Parkinson's disease.

The Shahmoradian lab focuses on deciphering the structures of macromolecular assemblies and associated cellular components relevant to neurodegenerative disease using integrative multi-modal microscopy approaches, with an emphasis on correlative light and electron microscopy (CLEM) and cryo-electron tomography (cryo-ET). These studies span from cells to animal models to human patients. The lab also develops and applies new technologies to push the boundaries of these techniques.


Using Format