Park wins Parkinson’s award
Eunyong Park, an associate professor of molecular and cell biology at the University of California, Berkeley, has been selected as a 2026 Molecular Therapeutics Initiative, or MTI, Parkinson’s Therapeutics awardee. UC Berkeley launched the program in 2025 to support academic research aimed at developing new Parkinson’s therapies, a disease that affects more than 10 million people worldwide. Park is one of three individuals who will receive $90,000 to fund their research.
Park’s group studies how cells target and maintain proteins in organelles such as the endoplasmic reticulum and mitochondria using structural and biochemical approaches, including cryogenic electron microscopy. With the MTI funding, Park and graduate researcher Laurie Wang will identify small molecules that enhance protein-mediated mitophagy, aiming to strengthen mitochondrial quality-control pathways that are disrupted in Parkinson’s disease. He has received many awards, including the Blavatnik Regional Award finalist, the Vallee Scholar Award, a Pew Biomedical Scholarship and the Amgen Young Investigator Award.
Nobel laureate Randy Schekman, the scientific chair of the Aligning Science Across Parkinson’s initiative, along with Patrik Brundin of Roche and the Michael J. Fox Foundation, and others, selected the awardees.
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