Gia K. Voeltz

Biosketch

Gia Voeltz is an HHMI Investigator and a Professor in the Department of Molecular, Cellular and Developmental Biology at the University of Colorado, Boulder where she also serves as Chair of the PhD program. Gia Voeltz received her BA in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology from the University of California, Santa Cruz and her PhD in Biophysics and Biochemistry from Yale University. She was a Jane Coffin Childs Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Cell Biology at Harvard Medical School. Honors include a Searle Scholar Award, a Provost’s Faculty Achievement Award, an American Society for Cell Biology Early Career Life Scientist Award, an American Society for Cell Biology Porter Lecture Award, and an HHMI Faculty Scholar Award. Gia Voeltz began her faculty position at the University of Colorado, Boulder in 2006 and was appointed an HHMI Investigator in 2018.

Research Interests

Dr. Voeltz's lab is interested in understanding how ER structure and dynamics are regulated and the role of ER contact sites in regulating the structure of other organelles in health and disease. Over the past several years her research has revealed surprising roles for ER contact in defining the position where mitochondria, endosomes and even membrane-less organelles like RNP granules undergo constriction and division. On mitochondria, the lab further discovered that both fusión and fission machineries co-localize to the same ER contact sites that they refer to as dynamic nodes. Her current research goals are aimed at unraveling the factors, functions, and mechanisms of ER-mediated organelle constriction, fission and fusion. Her lab further aims to forge a link between basic biology and disease. For example, she is studying how ER shaping proteins contribute to viral replication center formation and are probing whether ER contact sites serve as conduits for RNA virus trafficking through cytoplasmic organelles. Finally, her work is addressing how ER patterning by membrane shaping proteins during neuronal differentiation and growth guides the distribution of the associated microtubules and other organelles in health and disease.