ASSISTANT PROFESSOR | Pharmacological Sciences, ASSISTANT PROFESSOR | Neuroscience

After receiving her PhD degree from the Institute of Biophysics, the Chinese Academy of Sciences where she studied the fundamental mechanisms of synaptic transmission in the Prof. Jianyuan Sun lab (J Neurosci., 2015), Dr. Jinye Dai joined Prof. Thomas Südhof lab and completed her postdoctoral study at Stanford University. At Stanford, she has elucidated mechanistically the function of synaptic molecules whose mutations are found in neuropsychiatric disorders including autism spectrum disorder or schizophrenia (Cell, 2019; Neuron, 2019; Nature, 2021). Her very recent work is the first to demonstrate that very similar synaptic molecular complexes are differentially active in different synapses (eLife, 2022). In her new lab at Mount Sinai, Dr. Dai lab will dissect the interplay between genetic and environmental stressors in the adaptive healthy brain function and pathology of stress-induced decompensation in neuropsychiatric disorders. Specifically, Dr. Dai lab aims to identify the neuronal circuits that respond to social stress, and to identify the synaptic mechanisms that lead to neuronal circuit decompensation underlying social stress susceptibility by using mouse models. Furthermore, to gain comprehensive insight into the molecular basis of neuropsychiatric disorders in human neurons, her lab uses human induced neurons to further investigate how human neurons respond to environmental stressors.