Affiliation: Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine, Los Angeles, CA

Dr. Youngshin Lim is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine at the Cedars-Sinai Medical Center located in Los Angeles. She received her PhD in Biology from the University of Pennsylvania for her study in Developmental Neurobiology. She completed her postdoctoral training in Neurodegeneration at the University of Pennsylvania Center for Neurodegenerative Disease Research. After her postdoctoral training, while at the Brigham and Women’s Hospital/Harvard Medical School, she started working on ER-mitochondria contacts and showed that the defects in these contacts might be a potential pathological mechanism underlying REEP1 (receptor expression-enhancing protein1)-mediated Hereditary Spastic Paraplegia, a neurodegenerative disorder mainly affecting distal limbs. She participated in developing a ‘split-Renilla luciferase assay’, which is a method to quantitatively measure the level of ER-mitochondria contacts in live cells. Currently, her primary research focuses on understanding neural development and degeneration as well as investigating pathological mechanisms underlying neurodevelopmental and neurodegenerative disorders. She is particularly interested in studying the role(s) of inter-organelle membrane contacts in these disorders.