Lindsey Young, PhD

Postdoctoral Fellow (Senior Scientist)

I am uniquely suited to answer mechanistic questions across scales. I am a structural cell biologist. In graduate school, I wanted to make mechanistic discoveries and understand how the nano-machines inside our cell worked. I focused on how the cell took out the trash, what were the coordinated steps that lead to an entirely new organelle (the autophagosome) to form de novo in just five minutes. I was able to capture an integral protein complex (the Class III Phosphatidylinositol-3 Kinase Complex) in the "on" and "off" state through high-resolution single particle cryo-Electron Microscopy in order to understand what regulated this macromolecular complex. In my postdoc, I furthered both these areas by visualizing the entire cell- all the myriad nano-machines directly inside the cell by cryo-EM in order to perform structural analysis of macromolecules in their native context (the cell). What a dream for any structural biologist. 

However, I learned that it is challenging to identify and distinguish all these different nano-machines within the crowded cellular environment, so out of necessity I began developing more tools. 

2024 Leading Edge Fellow

2019-2023 NIH National Cancer Institute K00 Postdoctoral Transitional Fellowship Award

2017-2019 NIH National Cancer Institute F99 Transitional Fellowship Award

2010  Research Experience for Undergraduates, National Science Foundation

2007-2011 Bright Futures Scholarship, Florida Department of Education

2007-2011 New College of Florida Scholastic Achievement Tuition Scholarship

2021 Runner-Up Art Prize at 8th Annual Southern California Cryo-EM Symposium

2020 2nd Place Art Prize at 7th Annual Southern California Cryo-EM Symposium

2018 Keystone Symposia Future of Science Fund scholarship, Autophagy Keystone Meeting

2016 Keystone Symposia Future of Science Fund scholarship, in honor of Sachi Nakashima

2016         UC Berkeley Travel Grant to attend the 2016 Keystone Symposia Conference on Autophagy: Molecular and Physiological Mechanisms in Whistler, Canada

2015 Outstanding Graduate Student Instructor Award, Graduate Division, UC Berkeley

2015 Honorable Mention, Graduate Research Fellowship Program, National Science Foundation

2014 UC Berkeley Travel Grant to attend the 7th Annual International Symposium on Autophagy in Huangshan, China, selected for  presentation

2010 Travel Grant, Natural Sciences Division, New College of Florida