Vidyadhara D J, PhD, is a postdoctoral associate in Dr. Sreeganga Chandra’s lab, Departments of Neurology & Neuroscience, Yale University School of Medicine. He holds a PhD in neurophysiology and a Master’s in medical physiology from India. Vidyadhara started his research on Parkinson’s disease during his doctoral studies. He worked on three different aspects of Parkinson’s disease, namely, characterizing age-related glial changes in the human substantia nigra, mechanisms of mice strain-dependent differential susceptibility to parkinsonian toxin MPTP, and autophagy-modulating small molecules as a treatment strategy for Parkinson’s disease.

Currently, he is working on understanding the role of the cellular endolysosomal system in the pathogenesis of Parkinson’s disease. His studies focus on elucidating the pathogenic role of auxilin (a clathrin uncoating protein) and glucocerebrosidase 1 (a lysosomal enzyme) abnormalities in causing both motor and cognitive dysfunction of Parkinson’s disease.