Joseph R. Mazzulli, PhD, received his BS in neuroscience and biochemistry from the University of Pittsburgh and in 2007 completed a PhD in neuroscience at the University of Pennsylvania. During his doctoral training, Dr. Mazzulli studied the effects of dopamine -- the brain chemical depleted in Parkinson's disease -- on the clumping of protein alpha-synuclein using cellular and pre-clinical models. He then undertook postdoctoral training in neurology at the Massachusetts General Hospital/Harvard Medical School. There, Dr. Mazzulli examined the role of lysosomes -- tiny sacks that serve as cellular waste disposals -- in neurodegenerative diseases. He is currently an associate professor of neurology at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago. His laboratory is focused on determining how the misfolding and aggregation of alpha-synuclein cause neurodegeneration. In his research, Dr. Mazzulli uses cultures of human dopamine-producing cells and pre-clinical models with features of neurodegeneration.