Christopher Burd, PhD

Principal Investigator

I received a PhD in 1994 from Northwestern University for my research with Professor Gideon Dreyfuss into mechanisms of pre-mRNA processing. I left the RNA world to investigate lipid-based signaling with Professor Scott Emr at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute at the University of California, San Diego. I started my own research program at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine in 1998, investigating the role of phosphatidylinositol 3-kinase in the sorting of proteins within the endosomal system. In 2011, I moved to the Department of Cell Biology at Yale. (That's me pretending to use the microscope.) In 2017, I received a MERIT award from the US National Institutes of Health and in 2018, I was elected Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) for my group’s contributions toward understanding organelle biogenesis pathways. When I’m not discussing science with my colleagues, I enjoy cycling, playing acoustic music, hiking, travel, and spending time with my family and two energetic English Setters.