Professor Friederike Zunke received a PhD from the biochemical department at the University of Kiel (Germany) in 2015 for work focusing on the role of lysosomal dysfunction in neurodegeneration. She continued to work on lysosomal pathways and alpha-synuclein aggregation processes during her postdoctoral training in the department of neurology at the Northwestern University in Chicago. In 2016, she began to work as an independent group leader in the Institute of Biochemistry at the University of Kiel, and in 2020 she was appointed as junior professor for translational neurosciences in the department of molecular neurology at the University Hospital Erlangen/FAU Erlangen (Germany). She and her group continue to use biochemical, cellular and structural analyses to probe the molecular and structural mechanisms of Parkinson’s disease. She is also applying translational approaches to target alpha-synuclein aggregation and lysosomal function.