Robert V. Farese

Physician-scientist Robert Farese, Jr., is a professor of Cell Biology at the Sloan Kettering Institute of Memorial Sloan Kettering. He is co-Principal Investigator of the Farese and Walther Laboratory, which is part of Sloan Kettering Institute and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. He is a leadeing researcher in the study of cellular lipid metabolism and has made seminal contributions to understanding of energy storage as triglycerides in cellular organelles called lipid droplets.

Farese's focus, in the lab co-led with Tobias Walther, is investigating cellular lipid and energy metabolism, in particular the mechanisms and physiology of neutral lipid synthesis and storage. More broadly the lab studies the mechanisms how cells regulate the abundance of lipids, how they store lipids to buffer fluctuation in their availability, and how these processes function in membrane biology and cell physiology, and how dysfunction of these pathways leads to diseases, including cancer, metabolic diseases, and neurodegeneration.

He co-founded the Bluefield Project to Cure frontotemporal dementia (FTD), and led its discovery science efforts, and recently co-founded Kestrel Neuroscience, a new effort to find and develop therapies for all forms of FTD.