Dr. Soni Deshwal

The complex role of mitochondria in cell death fascinates me. How can a single organelle both initiate and inhibit cellular death? I am driven to understand the metabolic plasticity of these organelles and how their dynamic flexibility shapes cellular outcomes under stress.

Soni is passionate about the basic questions in mitochondrial biology. Currently she is leading a group at Helmholtz-Munich, funded by an ERC Starting Grant. Her research focuses on the metabolic plasticity of mitochondria, particularly in relation to stress responses and cell death. Soni gained extensive mitochondrial expertise during her postdoctoral work at the Max-Planck Institute for Biology of Ageing and during her PhD at the University of Padova. She became particularly interested in ferroptosis during her postdoc, where she discovered that mitochondria can inhibit ferroptosis by transporting a lipid molecule, CoQ, to the plasma membrane. Her work aims to understand how mitochondria adapt to cellular stress and how their metabolic flexibility can be leveraged to combat diseases like neurodegeneration and mitochondrial disorders.