Dr. Pallanck graduated from the University of California, Davis with BS in biochemistry in 1985, and from the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in NYC with a PhD in 1992. He conducted his graduate work with the late Dr. LaDonne Schulman, studying the mechanisms by which nucleic acids are recognized by nucleic acid binding proteins. Following his graduate work, Dr. Pallanck pursued postdoctoral work with Dr. Barry Ganetzky at the University of Wisconsin, where he used genetic and molecular approaches in the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster to study mechanisms of neurotransmitter release. He accepted a faculty position in the department of Genetics at the University of Washington in 1997, where he extended the focus of his laboratory to the study of neurodegenerative disorders, of which Parkinson’s disease is a major effort.  Dr. Pallanck is currently an associate professor in the department of Genome Sciences (formerly Genetics) at the University of Washington.