Valerie Cullen obtained her BSc (Hons) in Pharmacology in 1995 from University College Dublin, Ireland, where she was the 1995 Zeneca Prize Winner. She was awarded her PhD in 1999, also from the Pharmacology Dept of University College Dublin. After two years as a Clinical Chemist in the Pathology Laboratory of St James’s Hospital Dublin, she moved to the Institute of Psychiatry, King’s College London and spent two years as a postdoctoral fellow working with Professor Chris Miller on motor neuron disease. In 2003 she began a second postdoctoral fellowship in the neurology dept of Brigham and Women’s Hospital / Harvard Medical School, working with Professor Michael Schlossmacher. Her research focused on the biology of Parkinson’s disease and lysosomal storage disorders. Specifically, she worked on cellular synuclein handling and the role of the lysosome in maintaining synuclein stasis. She has been with Link Medicine since September 2007.