Irene Pichler, PhD, is a senior researcher at the Center for Biomedicine at the European Academy of Bolzano, Italy. She got her degree in biology from the University of Innsbruck, Austria and earned her PhD from the University of Lübeck, Germany working on the genetics of Restless legs syndrome. Her main scientific interests are molecular genetic studies to detect linkage or association to particular chromosomal regions contributing to the susceptibility for common, complex genetic disorders, especially neurodegenerative and other neurological diseases, to identify the disease-causing or modifying genes, and to characterize their functional roles. For this, gene expression analyses and cell-based assays in different cellular models are used. In particular, she is investigating the regulation of mitochondrial function and morphology in various genetic forms of Parkinson’s disease by using human cellular models.