Dr. habil. Katja Burk studied biology at the University of Hohenheim (Stuttgart) and completed her diploma thesis at the Max-Planck-Institute for Neurobiology in Martinsried, Munich. She then moved to Cardiff, UK to obtain her PhD in developmental neurobiology, followed by two postdoctoral positions at the IBDML in Marseille, Luminy, France. Dr. Burk returned to Germany in 2014 on an independent grant from the German Academic Exchange Programme (DAAD) and the Dorothea Schlözer funding for a postdoctoral position at the European Neuroscience Institute (ENI) in Göttingen, a Joint Initiative of the University Medical Center Göttingen and the Max Planck Institute for Multidisciplinary Sciences. In 2017, Dr. Burk became a funded group leader within the DFG Cluster of Excellence “Nanoscale Microscopy and Molecular Physiology of the Brain (CNMPB)”, in the Department of Neurology at the University Medical Center Göttingen. She received additional funding from the German research Council (DFG), The German Society for Neuromuscular Disease (DGM) as well as from the Heidenreich von Siebold funding which supports academics on their path to their Habilitation. In July 2022 Dr. Burk was appointed as a lecturer in the School of Biochemistry and Cell Biology at UCC. 

Dr. Burk completed her Habilitation (equivalent to a D.Sc. in Ireland) at the Georg-August University Göttingen in developmental neurobiology in 2023: A central contribution of her work is the demonstration that receptors continue to signal after they are internalized into the cell. Rather than becoming inactive once removed from the plasma membrane, activated receptors are packaged into endosomes that function as mobile signaling platforms. These “signaling endosomes” can travel through neuronal processes and sustain signaling over long distances, allowing distal axons to communicate with the cell body and nucleus. This is especially important in neurons because of their extreme size and polarity. This work helped advance a broader conceptual shift in neuroscience: signaling is not just determined by whether a receptor is activated, but also by where that receptor travels inside the cell, how long it signals, and which intracellular transport systems regulate it. This framework has become important for understanding neurodevelopment, synaptic plasticity as well as neurodegeneration. 

At UCC, Dr. Burk and her team are working mainly on motor neuron disease and neuropathies, using induced pluripotent stem cells, high-resolution microscopy and biochemistry. To conduct this work, Dr. Burk and her lab has received funding from UCC/SEFS, the Motor Neurone Disease Association (MNDA), the Irish Research Council (IRC) and the Higher Education Authority (HEA).

Dr. Burk reviews for several European grant agencies and it a member of the Med5 PhD and the Med5 Postdoc panel for Research Foundation Flanders. 

By training, Dr. Burk is a developmental neurobiologist and for many years, her research focussed on axon guidance mechanisms, neuronal survival and synapse formation. Dr. Burk has specific expertise on how activated receptors traffic and transmit their signals within neurons, an essential process during development and – if this process is failing- in neurodegeneration. 

At UCC, the current research builds on this expertise by studying the failing cellular mechanisms that lead to neuropathies and motor neuron disease such as Charcot-Marie-Tooth disease and Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis. To study such mechanisms, the lab currently focusses on human models using iPSC-derived sensory and motor neurons, but the lab also has expertise in primary neurons from rat, mouse and chick.  The lab has expertise in imaging techniques (e.g. confocal, total internal reflection fluorescence (TIRF), stimulated emission depletion (STED), electron- or spinning-disk microscopy) and biochemistry.