Session 1: Lipids droplets from nutrition to health and disease

The Phase of Fat: Mechanisms and Physiology of Lipid Storage. 

Tobias Walter (HHMI/ Memorial Sloan Kettering Institute, USA)

Dr Tobias C. Walther is Member and Chair of the Cell Biology Program at Sloan Kettering Institute in New York City. He is the Enid A Haupt Chair in Cell Biology, Professor of Molecular Biology at Weill Cornell Graduate School and investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI).

With his scientific partner, Dr. Robert Farese, jr., Walther elucidates the molecular mechanisms of lipid metabolism. They uncover fundamental mechanisms lipid storage in cells as well as lipid turnover. They elucidate the physiology and pathologies linked to lipid synthesis, storage and degradation, including discovering mutations in these pathways that lead to congenital diarrhea syndrome, lipodystrophy or neurodegeneration in humans.

Dr. Walther was trained in Dr. Iain Mattaj’s laboratory at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory in Heidelberg, Germany and in Dr. Peter Walter’s laboratory at UC San Francisco studying membrane biology. In 2006, he started his laboratory at the Max Planck Institute of Biochemistry in Martinsried, Germany and then Yale’s School of Medicine (New Haven, USA) studying the biochemistry, cell biology and physiology of lipid droplets. From 2014 to 2022, Dr. Walther was a professor of cell biology at Harvard Medical School, professor of molecular metabolism at Harvard School of Public Health, and an associate member of the Broad Institute. He also served as the director of the Center on Causes and Prevention of Cardiovascular Disease.

Dr. Walther has received numerous honors, including the Merck Award of ASBMB, Avanti Award for Lipid Research and an honorary professorship at Tsinghua University.