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Genevieve C. Sparagna, PhD (she/her/hers)

Associate Professor
University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Center
Aurora, Colorado, United States

Genevieve C. Sparagna, PhD got her undergraduate degree in Physics from MIT and went on to do her graduate studies in Biophysics at the University of Rochester where she developed a fascination with mitochondria, working under her PhD advisor and expert in mitochondrial calcium transport, Dr. Thomas Gunter. She went on to do a postdoc at the University of Texas Houston Medical Center where she was introduced to the mitochondrial phospholipid, cardiolipin, by Dr. William Dowhan who is a world renown cardiolipin expert. Once she brought her cardiolipin studies to the University of Colorado Boulder, she realized that she wouldn’t get far unless she learned how to do mass spectrometry herself to identify the molecular fatty acid side chain alterations in the cardiolipin molecule, so she enlisted the help of one of the foremost lipid mass spectrometry experts, Dr. Robert Murphy, at the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus. Once she developed the technique, she was able to study changes in cardiolipin with heart failure in rats and later humans and other animals, then with dietary changes and a host of other conditions and diseases. For over 25 years, she has studied cardiolipin and has become an expert in her own right on the alterations of this strange phospholipid in health and disease collaborating with researchers around the world. She has since moved her lab to the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus where she is an Associate Research Professor in the Department of Medicine, Division of Cardiology.

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