Cell scientist to watch – Ginny G. Farías

Abstract

Ginny G. Farías is an Assistant Professor of Cell Biology at Utrecht University in The Netherlands. She trained in molecular neurobiology with Prof. Nibaldo Inestrosa during PhD at the Pontifical Catholic University of Chile in Santiago, Chile, where she studied mechanisms of neurodegeneration in Alzheimer's disease. She then completed a postdoctoral fellowship with Prof. Juan Bonifacino at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland, USA. As a postdoc, she focused on understanding the fundamental cellular processes that drive polarized trafficking of proteins in neurons. In 2018, she started her lab at Utrecht University, where her group develops sophisticated tools to investigate how the local organisation and dynamics of organelles contribute to neuronal polarity. For our Special Issue on Cell and Tissue Polarity, we spoke with Ginny over Zoom about her perseverance to become an independent researcher, fascination with neuronal organisation and support for open access science.