New CELL Faculty Member Profile – Hilla Weidberg
Dr. Weidberg is a newly appointed assistant professor in the Department of Cellular and Physiological Sciences whose lab is located on the 3rd floor of the Life Sciences Center on the UBC campus.
Hilla grew up in Tel Aviv and did her undegraduate and MSc training at Tel Aviv University where she became interested in endocytosis. She then did her PhD at the Weizmann Institute with Zvulun Elazar and characterized a number of molecular mediators of autophagosome biogenesis. For her post-doc, Hilla moved to North America and worked on a number of aspects of mitochondrial-nuclear-communication with Angelika Amon at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. One of these projects led her to identify a surveillance pathway, which she calls ‘MitoCPR’, that protects mitochondria when they are subjected to protein import stress. This work was published in Science.
Here at UBC Dr. Weidberg want to continue investigating the mechanisms that regulate MitoCPR specifically, and mitochondrial quality control more broadly. To do this she building a dynamic research group where the major goal will be to ask and answer important fundamental questions in cell biology.
When we asked her what she likes about Vancouver outside of the lab, Hilla told us it was the fact that it has many of the amenities of a big city while simultaneously being so close to nature.
Please joining us in welcoming Dr. Weidberg to the CELL program!