Welcome Meiyan Wang, PhD
Dr. Meiyan Wang joins the Department of Neurobiology and will be a member of the UCLA Broad Stem Cell Research Center
We are pleased to announce the arrival of Dr. Meiyan Wang, Assistant Professor in Neurobiology and member of UCLA’s Broad Stem Cell Research Center.
Meiyan completed her doctoral studies at UCSD as a CIRM predoctoral fellow in Dr. Fred Gage’s laboratory, where she studied the molecular basis of brain somatic mosaicism.
As a postdoctoral fellow at the Salk Institute with Dr. Gage, Meiyan developed a glia-enriched cortical organoid model enabling efficient generation of postnatal-stage neurons and glia. Using transplantation of human brain organoids into mouse brains, she demonstrated the formation of cortical astrocyte subtypes and a blood-brain barrier–like structure and identified a key metabolic regulator of reactive astrocytes. She received the Brain & Behavior Research Foundation’s Young Investigator Award for her work in advancing the understanding of human astroglial function in disease.
Meiyan will be establishing a research program focused on applying complex in vivo brain organoid models to decode neuronal and glial function in both health and disease.