Call for papers - Mitochondrial metabolism and dynamics

Valentina Perissi, PhD, Boston University, USA

Dr Valentina Perissi earned her BSc and MSc (“Laurea”) in Molecular Biology from the University of Torino, Italy, and a PhD in Molecular Pathology from UCSD, where she studied transcriptional regulation and chromatin remodeling. She completed postdoctoral training in Endocrinology and Metabolism under Dr M. Geoff Rosenfeld at UCSD. Now an Associate Professor of Biochemistry and Cell Biology at Boston University, Dr Perissi’s research focuses on genomic regulation of metabolism, emphasizing mitochondria-nuclear communication. 

Ulrike Topf, PhD, Polish Academy of Sciences, Poland

Dr Ulrike Topf received her PhD in 2011 from the Friedrich Miescher Institute/ University of Basel, Switzerland. She completed her postdoctoral training at the International Institute of Molecular and Cell Biology in Warsaw (IIMCB), Poland, where she contributed to the discovery of cellular responses to mitochondrial stress caused by impairment of protein import into mitochondria. In 2018, Dr Topf became an Assistant Professor and Research Group Leader. Her group studies cellular mechanisms that modulate mitochondrial function during acute cellular stress and ageing in yeast and C. elegans, with the long-term goal of identifying molecular targets to improve an organism's healthspan.

Hong Xu, PhD, National Institute of Health, USA

Dr Hong Xu earned his BSc from Nankai University and MSc from Peking University in China. In 1998, he moved to the United States to pursue a PhD at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, studying Drosophila visual transduction. From 2005-2009, Dr Xu conducted postdoctoral research at the University of California, San Francisco, where he developed a method for selecting inheritable mtDNA mutations in Drosophila, laying the foundation for future studies on mtDNA inheritance. In 2010, Dr Xu joined the National Institutes of Health as a Principal Investigator and was promoted to Senior Investigator in 2017. His research program at NIH focuses on understanding the fundamental principles and cellular mechanisms governing mtDNA transmission.

Mara Zilocchi, PhD, University of Milano-Bicocca, Italy

Dr Mara Zilocchi's scientific career began at the end of 2014, when she started her PhD at the University of Insubria, Italy. In 2019, Dr Zilocchi was employed as a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Regina, Canada, where she was involved in several systems neuroscience-related projects, including the development of a co-fractionation/mass spectrometry approach and a bioinformatic pipeline for investigating mitochondrial protein assemblies in neuronal cells. Since 2023, Dr Zilocchi have been employed at the University of Milano-Bicocca, Italy, as an Assistant Professor, where she is currently studying nuclear-mitochondrial crosstalk changes in amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. Her research has always been focused on deciphering mitochondrial dysfunctions in neurodegenerative and neuropsychiatric disorders, using both -omics and targeted approaches.