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Renowned neurobiologist and former taekwondo captain Chih-Ying Su leaves US for China

As former faculty vice dean swaps San Diego for Shenzhen, her lab offers jobs, training to researchers interested in sensory signalling

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Neurobiologist Chih-Ying Su has left her position at UC San Diego to take up a role at the Shenzhen Academy of Medical Sciences (SMART). Photo: Handout
Shi Huang
Celebrated neurobiologist Chih-Ying Su, who specialises in research on the sense of smell using fruit flies and mosquitoes, has left her position as faculty vice-chair at the University of California San Diego to join the Shenzhen Academy of Medical Sciences (SMART).
The Taiwan-born American scholar’s appointment as a full-time senior investigator was confirmed by SMART on July 2.

Professor Su’s lab focuses on how olfactory receptor neurons (ORNs) process odour information, as these neurons are the primary source of sensory input. Her research findings have been published in leading journals in international neuroscience and biology, including Nature, Neuron, Nature Communications and PNAS.

“I decided to join SMART at the end of last year, deeply impressed by the advanced hardware conditions and the strong academic atmosphere of the research institute,” Su said in an email interview. “The outstanding leadership and academic vision of [SMART] president Yan Ning deeply attracted me.”

The former tenured professor and vice-chair of neurobiology at UC San Diego conducts her research using fruit flies, which are a model organism – a species selected by scientists for general research on the fundamental laws of life.

They are inexpensive to breed and reproduce quickly, and their key genes and signalling pathways are similar to those in humans.

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