CV

Autophagy, Golgi quality control, and drug discovery

• Proposed and lead a small-molecule drug discovery program to develop autophagy-targeting chimeras (AutoTACs)
• Lead a team of technicians, PhD students, postdocs, and contract research organizations
• Ran several drug discovery campaigns, including virtual, DNA-encoded library, and biophysical screens
• Carried out a hit-to-lead study identifying the first ligands to our protein target, and solved the first crystal structures of the target bound to small-molecule ligands
• Developed sub-micromolar ligands to the autophagy initiation complex capable of rewiring autophagy
• Discovered that the autophagy machinery is co-opted to shut down innate immune signaling by delivering STING from the Golgi to the lysosome

Pharmacological and cellular regulators of mitophagy

• Showed that two clinical-stage mitophagy activators work by sensitizing cells to mitochondrial stress, not by directly activating PINK1/Parkin (Science Advances, 2025)
• Characterized the lipid-tethering properties of the autophagy scaffold FIP200
• Developed and characterized a fluorescent sensor for lysosome–mitochondria contact sites
• Developed a mass-spectrometry method to identify proteins trafficking between organelles within the same cell
• Used X-ray crystallography and protein NMR to map ligand binding sites

Mitochondrial channel biophysics

• Single-molecule electrophysiology of VDAC isoforms and their regulation by α-synuclein, calcium, and drugs such as olesoxime and efsevin (Science Advances, 2025; JBC, 2026)
• Built statistical-physics models and analysis pipelines for single-channel experiments

• Rajendran M*, Rosencrans WM*, et al. Three mammalian VDAC isoforms distinctly regulate mitochondrial function and proteome to maintain cell metabolism. J Biol Chem 302, 111009 (2026). DOI
• Rosencrans WM, et al. Putative PINK1/Parkin activators lower the threshold for mitophagy by sensitizing cells to mitochondrial stress. Sci Adv 11, eady0240 (2025). DOI
• Rosencrans WM, et al. Conformational plasticity of mitochondrial VDAC2 controls the kinetics of its interaction with cytosolic proteins. Sci Adv 11, eadv4410 (2025). DOI
• Rosencrans WM, Chan DC. Fusion activators enhance mitochondrial function. Mitochondrial Commun 1, 33–34 (2023). DOI

*Equal contribution · All publications →

PhD, Biochemistry and Molecular Biophysics

California Institute of Technology

BA, Physics (minor in Biology)

Colgate University · exchange student at the National University of Singapore, 2017

• 5050 Fellow, Fifty Years, Cohort 8, 2026
• Student Bioenergeticist Award, Biophysical Society, 2023
• Jacobs Translational Medicine Fellowship, Caltech, 2020
• NSF GRFP Honorable Mention, 2020 and 2021
• NIH Oxford-Cambridge Scholars Program, selected (declined), 2020
• J. Amato and A. Aveni Award in physics research, Colgate, 2019
• Poster Meritorious Honors, AACR Annual Meeting, 2019
• Biophysical Society Travel Award, 2019
• NIH Post-Baccalaureate IRTA, 2018

• Pharmacological targeting of Tau aggregates for autophagic removal, $2,810,983, 2022–2025
• Development of MitoTAC compounds to treat Parkinson’s disease, The Merkin Institute for Translational Research, $400,000, 2023–2025
• Uncovering the biochemical and structural basis of the VDAC–p97 interaction, The J. Yang and Family Foundation, $40,000, 2022

• Teaching Assistant, Caltech BBE: introductory biology and cellular microscopy; wrote assignments and developed microscopy labs (2021, 2024–2025)
• Tutor, Colgate Center for Learning, Teaching, and Research (2019)
• Lab Teaching Assistant, Colgate Biology (2017)

• Development of autophagy targeting chimeras (AutoTAC) · CARD Seminar, NIH, 2026
• Stopping the STING: autophagy machinery in innate immune control · Scripps Research seminar, 2026
• STING is suppressed by an ATG9A-ATG13-ATG101-dependent Golgi to lysosome degradation pathway to restrain chronic inflammation · Autophagy Gordon Research Conference, Ventura, CA, 2026 (invited)
• The FIP200 CLAW domain functions as an anionic membrane tether · Biophysical Society, 2025
• The mitochondrial VDAC isoforms: one molecule at a time · Biophysical Society award talk, 2023
• A dynamic plasticity of VDAC2 revealed by single-molecule electrophysiology · Biophysical Society, 2020
• VDAC isoforms in mitochondrial biology: why so similar, yet different? · NHLBI Mitochondrial Biology Symposium, 2019
• KLF4 regulates metabolic homeostasis in response to energy stress · AACR Annual Meeting, 2019