Erika Holzbaur, PhD
University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine
Erika Holzbaur, PhD, is the William Maul Measey Professor of Physiology at the University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine. She received her BS with high honors in chemistry from the College of William and Mary and her PhD in Biochemistry from Penn State. Holzbaur joined the faculty at Penn in 1992 and now holds an endowed professorship in the Department of Physiology. Her lab studies the dynamics of organelle trafficking in neurons; defects in this trafficking are causative for both neurodevelopmental and neurodegenerative disease. The lab also investigates cellular mechanisms required to maintain neuronal homeostasis, focusing on the dynamics of autophagy. Defects in autophagy are implicated in both Parkinson’s disease and ALS. Dr. Holzbaur has received a Porter Fellowship, the NINDS Javits Award, the Stanley N. Cohen Biomedical Research Award, the Jane M. Glick Graduate Student Teaching Award, the Sandra K. Masur Senior Leadership Award and is a Lifetime Fellow and past president of the American Society for Cell Biology. More than 55 postdocs and students have trained in her lab; many now run research labs at top universities in the US or internationally.