“Talk Title: TBD”

Xinzhu Yu, PhD
Associate Professor, IMM-Center for Neuroimmunology and Glial Biology

Xinzhu Yu, Ph.D., is an Associate Professor at the Brown Foundation Institute of Molecular Medicine – Center for Neuroimmunology and Glial Biology. She was an Assistant Professor at the Department of Molecular and Integrative Physiology of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign prior to joining UTHealth Houston in 2025.

Dr. Yu is interested in astrocytes, which are abundant non-neuronal cells that closely interact with neurons throughout the entire central nervous system. The long-term goal of her research is to understand how astrocytes communicate with neurons in various neural circuits to drive behaviors, as well as how alterations of astrocyte-neuron interaction contribute to the pathogenesis of neurological and psychiatric disorders. To tackle these questions, her lab uses a multidisciplinary approach with genetic/chemogenetic tools, in vivo imaging, behavioral assays, cell type-specific transcriptomics/proteomics and computational modeling.