Saranna Fanning is an instructor in neurology at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School. She received her undergraduate BSc degree from the National University of Ireland, Cork and performed her doctoral research work at Columbia University in New York, Carnegie Mellon in Pittsburgh and the National University of Ireland in Cork (the degree-awarding institution). Dr. Fanning performed postdoctoral training with Dr. Susan Lindquist at the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research in Massachusetts, where she developed her expertise in yeast protein toxicity models and cellular mechanisms of protein homeostasis with a focus on lipid metabolism in Parkinson’s disease (PD). Her research is focused on understanding the importance of lipid equilibrium in PD and identifying therapeutic targets in lipid pathways using  genetic and biochemical approaches in yeast, mammalian models and in stem cells produced from people with PD.