Luca Scorrano, MD, PhD

Department of Pathophysiology
University of Duisburg-Essen
Duisburg, Germany

Mitochondrial Dynamics and Cell Death (Oct. 6, 11:05 AM)

Luca Scorrano is currently a Professor of Cell Physiology and Metabolism at the University of Geneva. From 2003 to 2007, he was an Assistant Telethon Scientist of the Dulbecco-Telethon Institute at the Venetian Institute of Molecular Medicine in Padua, Italy.

He received his MD from the University of Padua Medical School in 1996 and his PhD frin the Department of Biomedical Sciences of the University of Padua in 2000. During this time, he discovered and detailed the properties of lipid second messenger that amplify cell death by engaging the permeability transition pore, an inner membrane channel. In 2000 he moved to the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Harvard Medical School, Boston, to conduct postdoctoral research in the laboratory of Stanley Korsmeyer.

Currently, Dr. Scorrano’s group is integrating genetics, imaging, electron tomography, mitochondrial physiology and biochemistry to unravel the roles of proteins that control mitochondrial dynamics in cell life and death.