Catherine M. Cahill, PhD, obtained her PhD from University College Dublin, Ireland, and later completed a postdoctoral fellowship in the Department of Immunology at the Babraham Institute, Cambridge, UK, and in the Department of Radiation Oncology at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston. She has held several positions at Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School, including instructor of medicine, assistant professor of pediatrics and, most recently, assistant professor of psychiatry-neuroscience. Dr. Cahill studies proteins called growth factors and cytokines, specifically, their production and function, in relation to inflammation and cancer. Shared with her colleagues in the Neurochemistry Laboratory at Massachusetts General Hospital, her discovery of the role of iron-responsive element (IRE) in the production of the amyloid precursor protein has paved the way for the screening of small-molecule compounds targeting alpha-synuclein production as a potential therapy for Parkinson's disease (PD). Her work is published in high-impact scientific journals, such as Journal of Biological Chemistry and Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America (PNAS). Dr. Cahill has taught at Harvard Medical School since 2008, receiving an Excellence in Tutoring award in 2010. She is a member of the Foundations core faculty on the New Harvard Medical School Pathways Curriculum.