Merina Varghese, Ph.D.

Biography

Merina Varghese studies how the molecular and morphological features defining types, states, and microenvironment of cells drive regional vulnerability of neurons to aging and neuropsychiatric diseases, including Alzheimer’s disease. Her approach combines deep expertise in disease biology with novel tools for spatial imaging of proteins and metabolites to discover potential biomarkers and therapeutic targets.

Dr. Varghese joined URI in January 2025. Previously, she was an assistant professor in the Nash Family Department of Neuroscience and the Ronald M. Loeb Center for Alzheimer’s Disease at Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, where she completed her postdoctoral training in the departments of Neurology and Neuroscience, investigating metabolic and synaptic changes underlying the brain’s regional vulnerability to disease in transgenic rodent models of Alzheimer’s disease amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, and and Phelan-McDermid syndrome using human postmortem brains in Alzheimer’s disease, Prader-Willi syndrome, and epilepsy. During her graduate training in the CSIR-Indian Institute of Chemical Biology, leading to her Ph.D. from Jadavpur University, India, she studied the role of mitochondria in Parkinson’s disease using an in vitro model.

Education

Doctor of Philosophy, Jadavpur University, Kolkata, India, 2008

Postdoctoral Fellow, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, New York, NY, 2009 – 2016

Instructor, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, New York, NY, 2016 – 2019

Assistant Professor (Research), Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, New York, NY, 2019 – 2024

Selected Publications

Neurological aging and neurodegenerative disease in humans and great apes. Edler MK, Hearn CJ, Guevara EE, Mhatre-Winters I, Varghese M*, Freire-Cobo C, Sherwood CC, Richardson JR, Raghanti MA, Hof PR Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Psychology, December 2025.

Age-related changes in synapse ultrastructure and neuroprotective effect of dietary curcumin in the lateral prefrontal cortex layer 3 of the rhesus monkey. Freire-Cobo C, Medalla M, Varghese M*, Janssen WGM, Luebke JI, Hof PR Geroscience, November 2025.

Endogenously generated Dutch-type Aβ nonfibrillar aggregates dysregulate presynaptic neurotransmission in the absence of detectable inflammation. Castranio EL, Varghese M*, Argyrousi EK, Kuldeep Tripathi K, Soderbergh L,  Bresnahan E, Lerner D, Garretti F, Zhang H, van de Loo J, Stimpson C, Talty R,  Glabe C, Levy E, Wang M, Ivkov M, Zhang B, Lannfelt L, Guerin B, Lubell W, Rahimipour S, Dickstein DL, Gandy SE, Arancio O, Ehrlich ME bioRxiv, March 2025.