Thomas Biederer, PhD, received his PhD from the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Germany, and performed postdoctoral training in molecular neuroscience at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas. He started his laboratory in 2003 at Yale University, was 2013-2019 at the Tufts University School of Medicine, and joined the Yale faculty in 2019 as a member of the Department of Neurology.

The multidisciplinary research in the Biederer group focuses on the biology of synapses, the cellular structures that connect neurons into networks. His laboratory has revealed that protein complexes spanning pre- and post-synaptic sites control synapse formation and maintenance and shape these intricate cellular structures. The long-term goals of his group are to mechanistically define synapse assembly and the specification of neuronal connectivity and to investigate the profound relevance of synaptic aberrations for human health, including in Parkinson’s disease.