Seminar topic: Decoding Cholesterol-mTORC1 signaling in Organelle Homeostasis and Disease

Roberto Zoncu studied molecular biology at the University of Pisa, Italy, where he completed his undergraduate thesis on the mechanisms of asymmetric stem cell division during brain development. He then moved to Yale School of Medicine to pursue a PhD in Cell Biology in the laboratory of Dr. Pietro De Camilli. At Yale, Roberto combined advanced microscopy and chemical genetic techniques to interrogate how a class of signalling lipids known as phosphoinositides control endocytic vesicle traffic and maturation.
In 2008, Roberto moved to the Whitehead Institute/MIT as a postdoctoral fellow in the laboratory of Dr. David Sabatini. There, he combined biochemical and microscopy-based assays to understand how lysosomes govern the signaling activity of the master growth regulator, mTORC1 kinase, and how these organelles generally function as a metabolic signaling centers.

In early 2014, he became an Assistant Professor in the Biochemistry, Biophysics and Structural Biology division of the Molecular and Cell Biology Department at UC Berkeley, and was promoted to Associate Professor (with tenure) in July 2019 and to Full Professor in 2023. He is co-director of the Molecular Therapeutics Initiative, which aims to increase the translational potential of research conducted at Berkeley (https://moleculartherapeutics.org/), and co-founder and advisor for Frontier Medicines Corp., a preclinical stage oncology company.

Roberto’s accomplishments have been recognized, among others, by the NIH Director’s New Innovator Award, the Pew-Stewart Scholarship for Cancer Research the Damon Runyon-Rachleff Innovation Award, the Pew Innovation Award and the Chan-Zuckerberg Initiative ‘Metabolism across scales’ award. 


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