Alfredo Gimenez-Cassina

I received my PhD from Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, under supervision of Dr. Javier Díaz-Nido, working on the identification and characterization of neuroprotective genes against mitochondrial dysfunction in experimental models of neurodegeneration. To this end, I also spent some time in the laboratory of Dr. Richard Wade-Martins a The Wellcome Trust Centre for Human Genetics – University of Oxford, learning to design high-capacity herpesviral vectors for gene therapy purposes.

I then pursued postdoctoral studies at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Harvard Medical School, Boston, under the mentorship of Dr. Nika Danial, studying how different metabolic checkpoints affect brain physiology and whole-body energy homeostasis. I then led my own independent research group, first at Karolinska Institutet, in the division led by Dr. Elias Arnér, and soon after at the Centro de Biología Molecular “Severo Ochoa”, Madrid, focusing on mechanisms that integrate cell signaling and metabolic flux in the central nervous system. In 2021 I took a career change and joined Nature Metabolism as a scientific editor. In 2025, I moved back to Karolinska Institutet as the programme manager of the Strategic Research Programme (SRP/SFO) in Diabetes.