| Suzanne Pfeffer | |
| Birth Name: | Suzanne Ruth Pfeffer |
| Workplaces: | Stanford University |
| Alma Mater: | University of California, Berkeley (BS) University of California, San Francisco (PhD) |
| Thesis Title: | The role of coated vesicles in intracellular transport |
| Thesis Url: | https://escholarship.org/uc/item/90k18764 |
| Thesis Year: | 1983 |
| Fields: | Parkinson's disease |
Suzanne Ruth Pfeffer is an American neuroscientist who is a professor at Stanford University. Her research investigates the molecular mechanisms that cause receptors to be transported between membrane compartments in cells, and she is an expert in Rab GTPases and the molecular basis of inherited Parkinson's disease. She is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Society for Cell Biology.
Pfeffer has said that she became interested in human physiology as a child. She was an undergraduate student at the University of California, Berkeley, where she became interested in biochemistry.[1] She worked with Michael Chamberlin on binding of Escherichia coli polymerase to T7 DNA polymerase.[2] She moved to the University of California, San Francisco for her graduate studies, where she worked with Regis B. Kelly on synaptic vessels. Her doctoral research investigated the role of coated vesicles in intracellular transport.[3]
After her PhD, she moved to Stanford University as a Hay Whitney postdoctoral fellow, where she worked with James Rothman on Golgi transport.[4]
Pfeffer set up her own research program at Stanford University, where she was the first woman to be appointed to the department of biochemistry. Her research investigates the fundamental mechanisms of membrane trafficking.[1] [5]