Phyllis I Hanson

Dr. Phyllis I. Hanson is the Minor J. Coon Professor and Chair of Biological Chemistry and holds faculty appointments in Cell & Developmental Biology and Neurology at the University of Michigan Medical School. She received a BA in Molecular Biophysics and Biochemistry from Yale University, followed by MD and PhD degrees from Stanford University, where she studied Ca²⁺/calmodulin-dependent kinase II (CaMKII) with Dr. Howard Schulman. As a Helen Hay Whitney Postdoctoral Fellow in the laboratory of Dr. Reinhard Jahn at Yale, she began her career-long investigation of membranes, organelles, and the proteins that regulate them.

Dr. Hanson spent two decades at Washington University in St. Louis, where she was named the Gerty T. Cori Professor of Cell Biology & Physiology in 2016. She joined the University of Michigan in late 2018 as Chair of Biological Chemistry. Her research - supported by the NIH and disease-focused foundations for over 25 years - continues to illuminate fundamental mechanisms of membrane regulation with relevance to human disease. She leads a dynamic and collaborative department, contributes broadly to educational initiatives, and currently co-chairs Michigan Medicine’s Endowment for the Basic Sciences (EBS).

Dr. Hanson is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) and the American Society for Cell Biology (ASCB), and was the recipient of the Biophysical Society’s 2026 Sir Bernard Katz Award. Earlier in her career, she held W.M. Keck, Searle, Sloan, and McKnight Scholar Awards. She chaired the 2024 Gordon Research Conference on Lysosomes & Endocytosis, serves on NIH and foundation review panels, and was for many years an Associate Editor of the Journal of Biological Chemistry.

Our lab studies how cells sense and repair stressed or damaged membranes, with a focus on lysosomes and their roles in health and disease. We use biochemical, cell-based, and advanced imaging approaches, building on a long-standing interest in the mechanisms that shape and regulate organelle membrane dynamics.