Editors & Staff

Editors

Tim Fessenden, Executive Editor

Tim Fessenden received his PhD from the University of Chicago under the mentorship of Margaret Gardel, for his work on the cytoskeletal regulation of multicellular invasion. He then moved to MIT where he completed postdoctoral studies with Stefani Spranger on tumor immunology with a focus on dendritic cells. Tim joined the Journal of Cell Biology as a Scientific Editor in 2021, and was appointed Executive Editor of LSA in March 2025.

Sarita Hebbar, Scientific Editor

Sarita received her PhD from Miami University (USA), where she studied the remodeling of neuromuscular connections. As a post-doc, at the Institute of Bioengineering and Nanotechnology (Singapore) and National Center for Biological Sciences (India), she utilized D. Melanogaster to better understand lipid perturbations in neurodegeneration. Most recently, at the Max Planck Institute of Molecular Cell Biology and Genetics (Germany), Sarita studied retinal patterning with a particular focus on polarized membrane expansion in developing photoreceptor cells. After a stint in industry, Sarita joined LSA as the Scientific Editor in January 2025.
s.hebbar@life-science-alliance.org 

Julia Cooper, Academic Editor

Julia Promisel Cooper is Chair of the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Genetics at the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus. She earned her BS from Emory University and received her PhD from the University of Colorado. She completed her postdoctoral training at the NIH, the University of Colorado at Boulder; and the Imperial Cancer Research Fund, London (now Cancer Research UK). Julia’s lab studies chromosome organization and the maintenance of genome integrity, with mechanisms of telomere function as a springboard. Recent advances include the discovery of a mode by which nontelomeric heterochromatin can acquire chromosome end-protection capacity, as well as expansion of the known repertoire of telomeres and centromeres to include the control of nuclear envelope breakdown and spindle formation.

Florent Ginhoux, Academic Editor

Florent Ginhoux is a Principal Investigator in the Singapore Immunology Network (SIgN), A*STAR and Adjunct Visiting Associate Professor in the Shanghai Immunology Institute, Jiao Tong University, China. He obtained a Masters degree in immunology from the Pasteur Institute and his PhD from the University Pierre et Marie CURIE, Paris VI.  In his postdoctoral work in the Laboratory of Miriam Merad in the Mount Sinai School of Medicine (MSSM), he studied the ontogeny and the homeostasis of cutaneous dendritic cell populations. Florent became Assistant Professor in the MSSM in 2008, joined SIgN in 2009, and was awarded as EMBO Young Investigator in 2013. His laboratories are focusing on the ontogeny and differentiation of macrophages and dendritic cells (DCs).

Sebastian Jessberger, Academic Editor

Sebastian Jessberger is Managing Director of the Brain Research Institute and Professor for Neurosciences at the University of Zurich. He studied medicine in Hamburg and started in 2002 a joint residency at the MDC and the Dept. of Neurology of the Charité in Berlin. As a postdoc (2004-2007) in the laboratory of Fred H. Gage at the Salk Institute, he continued to work on neural stem cell biology and neurogenesis in the adult brain. From 2007 to 2012 he was Assistant Professor at ETH Zurich and joined the Brain Research Institute in 2012. He received several prizes and was awarded to join the EMBO Young Investigator program in 2012.

Michael Overholtzer, Academic Editor

Michael Overholtzer is an Associate Member in the Cell Biology Program at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center. He received his bachelor’s degree from Ithaca College and his PhD from Princeton University, where he performed research on the p53 tumor suppressor with Arnold J. Levine. In his postdoc with Joan S. Brugge at Harvard Medical School, he identified the Hippo pathway effector Yap as an oncoprotein in breast cancer, and discovered a cell death mechanism called entosis. In his independent laboratory, he continues to study mechanisms of cell death, autophagy, and lysosomes.

Judith Zaugg, Academic Editor

Judith Zaugg is a group leader at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) in Heidelberg since 2014, focusing on computational genomics. Since 2018 she also jointly heads the Molecular Medicine Partnership group focusing on Stem Cell-Niche Networks. She studied at ETH Zurich and obtained her PhD from University of Cambridge and EMBL-EBI. For her postdoctoral work she went to Stanford University to study the genetic basis of epigenetic variation across humans. Her current research focusses on understanding gene regulatory mechanisms and their implications in common diseases. Her group uses multi-omics approaches and develops computational tools for integrating large-scale data with the aim of gaining mechanistic insights into disease and basic biological principles.

Advisory Editorial Board

As of June 2019
View board member bios

Staff

Jelena Kohajm, Editorial Assistant

Jelena Kohajm graduated from the Faculty of Political Science, Department of International Relations, at the University of Belgrade. She has extensive experience in scholarly publishing and has worked with various publishers before joining Life Science Alliance.
contact@life-science-alliance.org