Affiliation: Yale University School of Medicine, Departments of Neurology & Neuroscience

Vidyadhara D J, PhD is a Postdoctoral Associate and the U.S. Dept. of Defense Early Investigator in the Departments of Neurology & Neuroscience, Yale University School of Medicine. He holds a PhD in Neurophysiology from National Institute of Mental Health & Neurosciences, Bangalore, India, along with a Master’s in Medical Physiology from Kasturba Medical College, Manipal, India. He started his research career studying ischemic brain injury as well as teaching Human Physiology in a medical school. He then shifted to neurodegeneration research during his doctoral studies. Vidyadhara has worked on different aspects of Parkinson’s disease (PD), namely, characterizing age-related glial changes in the human substantia nigra, the mechanisms for mice strain-dependent differential susceptibility to parkinsonian toxin MPTP, and autophagy modulating small molecules as a potential treatment strategy for PD. Currently, he is working on understanding the role of endolysosomal systems in the pathogenesis of PD. His studies focus on elucidating the mechanisms for auxilin (a clathrin uncoating protein) and glucocerebrosidase 1 (lysosomal enzyme) in causing both motor and non-motor dysfunctions of PD.