Principal Investigator
walter.chen@utsouthwestern.edu

Walter received his B.A. in Chemistry from Princeton University. He earned his M.D. from Harvard Medical School and Ph.D. in Biology from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he worked with David M. Sabatini. As a graduate student, Walter developed the Rapid Organellar Immunopurification technology, which achieves rapid and specific isolation of organelles to enable robust profiling of organellar metabolites, which historically had been a challenge. Walter has applied this technology to mitochondria and peroxisomes, but others have adapted it to lysosomes, golgi, endoplasmic reticuli, melanosomes, synaptic vesicles, endosomes, and phagosomes. The Rapid Organellar Immunopurification technology has now become a popular tool for studying organelles and a powerful engine for biological discovery.

Walter completed his Pediatrics residency at Boston Children’s Hospital and Boston Medical Center, followed by a fellowship in Neonatal-Perinatal Medicine at UT Southwestern Medical Center, where he also joined the lab of Ralph DeBerardinis as a postdoctoral fellow. There, he studied uncharacterized organellar proteins and discovered PEX39, the first human peroxisomal biogenesis protein discovered in more than 20 years, and identified a new paradigm in peroxisomal protein import.

In 2026, he started his lab at UT Southwestern as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Molecular Biology and an Endowed Scholar in Medical Science. He also practices clinically as an Attending Neonatologist and has secondary appointments in the Department of Pediatrics and the Children’s Medical Center Research Institute (CRI).

Walter is a recipient of the STAT Wunderkind Award, the ASCI Emerging Generation Award, an NIH K08 Clinical Investigator Award, and a Burroughs Wellcome Fund Career Award for Medical Scientists.

Outside of work, Walter enjoys spending time with his wife and twin daughters, and is a diehard New York sports fan.