Dr. Patel received her PhD in pharmacology and toxicology at Purdue University and post-doctoral training in neuroscience at Duke University. She is currently professor in the Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences at the University of Colorado Denver. Her early work demonstrated a role for superoxide radicals in excitotoxic cell death and its amelioration by a metalloporphyrin antioxidant. A major focus of her laboratory is to identify the mechanisms by which mitochondrial reactive oxygen species mediate the death of dopaminergic neurons in Parkinson’s disease and develop neuroprotective therapeutic entities designed to scavenge and detoxifying reactive oxygen species.  She has authored more than fifty scientific publications including articles in the journals Neuron, Journal of Neuroscience, Journal of Biological Chemistry and Proceedings in the National Academy of Sciences. Dr. Patel serves on the editorial board of Free Radical in Biology and Medicine and has been the recipient of numerous grants from the National Institutes of Health, Michael J. Fox Foundation, Parkinson’s Disease Foundation and CURE.