Presidential Assistant Professorship of Physiology

Supported in part by The Pew Charitable Trusts, Presidential Professorships are awarded to exceptional scholars of any rank who will contribute to the diverse experiences, perspectives, and eminence of Penn faculty. They were established in 2011 to strengthen the University’s ability to recruit, retain and mentor distinguished scholars who are preeminent in their fields and have demonstrated a commitment to sustaining an inclusive and vibrant academic community.

Current Chairholder

Natali Chanaday, PhD

Natali Chanaday, PhD joined the University of Pennsylvania Department of Physiology in 2022 as a Presidential Assistant Professor of Physiology. She obtained her PhD in chemistry from the School of Chemistry at the Universidad Nacional de Córdoba in Argentina. There she studied immune and neurological alterations associated with the onset and development of an animal model of the human autoimmune, demyelinating, and neurodegenerative disease multiple sclerosis.  

Dr. Chanaday then moved to the U.S., where she joined the laboratory of Dr. Ege Kavalali as a postdoc in 2015. Her research focused on the recycling of synaptic vesicles, which mediate neurotransmitter release in neurons. The recycling of these synaptic vesicles is crucial for the maintenance of neurotransmission. Dr. Chanaday developed an unbiased method to measure the kinetics of synaptic vesicle endocytosis and used it to investigate how synaptic vesicle recycling is regulated by different fusion proteins, temperature, and calcium signals. Her work uncovered the molecular mechanisms underlying different forms of neurotransmission.   

Dr. Chanaday’s laboratory combines multi-scale approaches, from live imaging of synapses at high temporal precision to super-resolution microscopy, proteomics and electrophysiology in order to link molecular and morphological synaptic properties to neuron physiology. The Chanaday lab has two main lines of research: 1) modulation of neurotransmission by novel calcium sources and their role in neurodegeneration, with a focus on store-operated calcium entry and endoplasmic reticulum signaling; and 2) neuronal communication via extracellular vesicles, aimed at understanding the molecular mechanisms regulating extracellular vesicle release and their influence on neuron and brain function.