Christian Schlieker, PhD

Christian Schlieker is an expert in the cellular etiology of movement disorders, with a focus on nuclear compartmentalization and biomolecular condensates. He studied biology at the University of Bonn in Germany and the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia, before earning his PhD in the laboratory of Bernd Bukau at the Center for Molecular Biology in Heidelberg. There, he used biochemical and biophysical approaches to uncover how Clp/HSP100 AAA+ ATPases counteract proteotoxic protein accumulation.

He continued his training as an EMBO postdoctoral fellow with Hidde Ploegh at Harvard Medical School and the Whitehead Institute/MIT, where he explored the ubiquitin-proteasome system and discovered a novel role for a ubiquitin-like modifier in RNA biology.

Dr. Schlieker joined the Department of Molecular Biophysics and Biochemistry at Yale University in 2009, where he is now Professor, Vice Chair, and Director of Undergraduate Studies. He also holds a secondary appointment in the Department of Cell Biology. His honors include an NIH Director’s New Innovator Award. He has served on the scientific advisory board of the Dystonia Medical Research Foundation and on review panels for NIH, the Department of Defense, the German Excellence Initiative, the European Research Council, among others. At Yale, he has chaired the Committee of Majors for Yale College and currently serves on the Advisory Board of the Yale Center for Molecular Discovery.