Anna M. Rios

Anna is a Ph.D. student in the laboratory of Pietro De Camilli, studying the molecular mechanisms that regulate membrane trafficking and synaptic function. Anna began at the University of California, Berkeley as a high school student, where she studied vesicle biology under Nobel Prize laureate Randy Schekman. After graduating with a bachelor's degree, she joined Harvard University as a recipient of a Research Scholar Initiative award. In the lab of Pascal Kaeser, Anna independently led a research project investigating how phase separation organizes the protein machinery that mediates synaptic vesicle exocytosis. She presented this work at the Society for Neuroscience conference and learned of parallel work in the De Camilli lab. In 2024, Anna was awarded the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship and transitioned to Yale. Her current work, co-advised by Thomas Melia, seeks to identify how neurons clear proteins at synapses to sustain efficient synaptic vesicle cycling.