Becky Wallings, DPhil

Bio

Rebecca Wallings, DPhil, is an assistant professor and principal investigator of the Wallings lab in the Department of Neurology, Department of Microbiology and Immunology, and Stark Neurosciences Research Institute at the Indiana University School of Medicine. Her research career began at University College London (UCL), where she completed her MSc in clinical neuroscience in 2017, which culminated in a research thesis investigating the effects of Parkinson’s disease (PD)-associated LRRK2 mutations in immune cells. She then completed her DPhil in physiology, anatomy and genetics at the University of Oxford in 2018 under the supervision of Professor Richard Wade-Martins, director of the Oxford Parkinson’s Disease Centre, and Dr. Natalie Connor-Robson. Her thesis focused on the role of LRRK2 in the autophagy pathway and identified a novel LRRK2-substrate, v-type H+ ATPase proton pump (vATPase a1), with LRRK2-mutations disrupting this interaction and causing lysosomal dysfunction in neurons.

Rebecca's post-doctoral research has focused on understanding the role of the lysosome in inflammation in models of Parkinson's disease and dementia, with a keen interest in the role of both LRRK2 and progranulin at the interface of lysosomal function and inflammation. During this time, she was awarded two postdoctoral fellowships from the Parkinson Foundation and Bright Focus Foundation, as well as various intramural grants. In most recent years, Rebecca has been at the forefront of neuroimmunological research in Parkinson's disease, identifying the novel role of immune cell exhaustion in Parkinson's disease.

In 2024, Rebecca was awarded the prestigious Parkinson Foundation Launch Award, a four-year grant supporting her transition to independence, with the Wallings lab opening in October of 2025. Her independent research program is dedicated to understanding how an aging immune system, specifically immune cell exhaustion and immunosenescence, drives neurodegeneration and how we may leverage these mechanisms to develop targeted therapeutic strategies to slow, halt or prevent neurodegenerative disease.