Dr. Patrick is a Professor in the Neurobiology Section of the Division of Biological Sciences at the University of California at San Diego. Dr. Patrick is a leader in the field of ubiquitin-dependent protein turnover in neurons in health and disease. As a graduate student he made seminal contributions to the Alzheimer’s disease (AD) field with the discovery of p25, a truncated form of p35, which accumulates in the brains of patients with AD and promotes the hyperphosphorylation of tau and neurodegeneration by constitutively activating cyclin-dependent kinase 5 (cdk5) (Patrick et al., 1999 Nature). As a PI, his lab discovered that mammalian AMPA-type glutamate receptors are modified by ubiquitin which regulates their internalization and endocytic sorting to the lysosome for degradation and showed that regulation is important for plasticity and disease (Schwarz et al., 2010; Scudder et al, 2014; Rodrigues et al; 2016; Goo et al; 2017). Recently, his lab was the first to show that lysosomes traffic to dendritic spines in an activity-dependent manner and can be recruited to individual spines in response to local activation (Goo et al., 2017). He additionally is the Director of Mentorship and Diversity for the Division of Biological Sciences and past Associate Director of the Neurosciences Graduate Program (2013-2019) at UC San Diego. Dr. Patrick, born and raised in South Central Los Angeles, has also been a champion for diversity in STEM creating innovative programs and pathways for underserved and underrepresented minorities at UC San Diego and beyond. After a completing a MS in Biochemistry at UCSF (w/ Erin O’Shea) he received his Ph.D. from Harvard University in 1999 (w/ Li-Huei Tsai) and was a postdoctoral fellow at Caltech (w/ Erin Schuman). Dr. Patrick joined the UCSD faculty in 2004.