Rebecca
Wallings

Rebecca Wallings is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Neurology and Stark Neurosciences Research Institute at Indiana University. Her research career began at University College London (UCL), where she completed her MSc in Clinical Neuroscience in 2017 which culminated in a research thesis investigating the effects of Parkinson’s Disease (PD) mutations in immune cells. She then went on to complete her DPhil in Physiology, Anatomy and Genetics at the University of Oxford in 2018 under the supervision of Professor Richard Wade-Martins, Director of the Oxford Parkinson’s Disease Centre, and Dr. Natalie Connor-Robson. Her thesis focused on the role of LRRK2 in the autophagy pathway and identified a novel LRRK2-substrate, v-type H+ ATPase proton pump (vATPase a1), with LRRK2-mutations disrupting this interaction and causing lysosomal dysfunction in neurons.

Rebecca’s post-doctoral research has focused on understanding the role of the lysosome in inflammation in models of PD and dementia, with a keen interest in the role of both LRRK2 and progranulin at the interface of lysosomal function and inflammation. During this time, she was awarded two postdoctoral fellowships from the Parkinson Foundation and Bright Focus Foundation, as well as various intramural grants. In most recent years, Rebecca has been at the forefront of neuroimmunological research in PD, identifying the novel role of immune cell exhaustion in PD.