Gil Di Paolo received a Ph.D. in Biology from the University of Lausanne, Switzerland, in 1998. His graduate studies were conducted at Glaxo in Geneva, where they focused on the role of microtubule regulators in neuronal differentiation and survival. Gil subsequently conducted his postdoc with Dr. De Camilli at Yale University, where he discovered novel roles for phosphoinositides in the control of synaptic vesicle trafficking. In 2005, he obtained a Faculty appointment at Columbia University Medical Center (CUMC) in the Department of Pathology and Cell biology as well as at the Taub Institute for Research on Alzheimer’s Disease and the Aging Brain. His studies revealed a role for phosphoinositides and phospholipase signaling in the synaptotoxic and memory-impairing actions of amyloid-beta as well as in autophagy. In 2012, he obtained his tenure and promotion to Associate Professor at CUMC, after which he moved to Denali Therapeutics Inc. in 2016 in order to pursue his translational research on the role of lipid dysregulation and endolysosomal trafficking defects in neurodegenerative disorders and to develop novel therapeutics to treat them. More recently, Gil and his co-workers have discovered a novel role for TREM2 in the regulation of lipid metabolism and inflammatory responses in microglia.