Dr. Christian Johannes Gloeckner studied biochemistry at the University of Hannover and at the Hannover Medical School and obtained his PhD from the Technical University of Munich in 2001. During his doctoral work, Dr. Gloeckner studied protein-protein interactions. As post-doctoral fellow (2001-2004) at LMU Munich, he developed methods to isolate and purify protein complexes associated with inherited diseases using mass spectrometry (specialized technique used to sort chemicals). During that time, he also worked with liquid chromatography tandem--mass spectrometry, another technique that is used to separate and study proteins. Later, at the Helmholtz Zentrum München (2004-2014) and at the University of Tübingen (2010-2014), Dr. Gloeckner studied the functional characterization of Parkinson's disease-associated protein LRRK2. He participated in several studies that evaluated the biochemistry and protein structure of LRRK2, in addition to its associated protein interaction networks and its protein. Based on this work, Dr. Gloeckner reported one of the first demonstrations of LRRK2 kinase activity (2006) and also put forth a structural model of LRRK2 (2016).