Xinzhu Yu is an assistant professor in the Department of Molecular and Integrative Physiology. Her primary affiliation is Neurotechnology for Memory and Cognition. She was born in Beijing, China and came to the States in 2007 for her Ph.D study with Dr. Yi Zuo at University of California Santa Cruz. Professor Yu has always wanted to understand how the brain works; she started her career with a neurocentric view but by the end of her Ph.D. program, she became fascinated by another non-neuronal cell type, astrocytes. In 2014, she joined Dr. Baljit Khakh's lab at University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) as a postdoc, where she investigated astrocyte functions under health and disease at great depth. During this period, her interests in astrocytes were further shaped and refined. After completing her postdoctoral training, she established her own lab at UIUC in 2020 to continue exploring astrocytes in neural circuits and behavior.

Education

• B.S., Tsinghua University, Beijing, China

• M.S., Tsinghua University, Beijing, China

• Ph.D., University of California Santa Cruz

• 2019: NIH BRAIN Initiative Principal Investigators Meeting Travel Award, National Institutes of Health

• 2018 – 2019: Brain Research Institute Postdoctoral Award, University of California Los Angeles

• 2016 – 2017: American Heart Association Postdoctoral Fellowship, American Heart Association

Research areas:

• Neurodevelopmental disorders

• Neuropsychiatric disorders

• Glia

Research interests:

• Synaptic plasticity

• Learning and memory

• Neurological and psychiatric disorders

Our emotions and thoughts are generated and processed by a network of different cell types in the brain, including both neurons and glial cells. As the most abundant glial cells, the "star cells" - astrocytes - were discovered more than a century ago but were only considered to have passive supporting functions to neurons. However, many recent studies have challenged this view and suggested that astrocytes are an integral part of the central nervous system.

There are two major questions that we are interested in:

1. What are the cellular and molecular mechanisms by which astrocytes contribute to neural circuit plasticity, motor learning and memory, and the development of neuropsychiatric disorders?

2. How can we link and predict circuit and behavioral alterations based on astrocyte signaling changes?

To tackle these questions, we will take a systematic approach with innovative genetic tools, in vivo imaging, electrophysiological recordings, next generation sequencing and computational modeling. We hope that our findings will expand the understanding of astrocyte physiology as well as offer mechanistic insights into new biomarkers for early diagnosis and potential therapeutic treatments for neuropsychiatric disorders.