2023
May, 2023
On this memorial day, Yang lab presents a short video "We will fight for you" to highlight the small and bigger steps we took from 2017-2023. Special thanks to Maria for compiling the materials and making the video!
May, 2023
We are excited to launch a "patient first" research program to establish disease models and develop transformative interventions, thanks to the $2.5M Hodgkin-Huxley Award from the FamilieSCN2A foundation. Our lab keeps expanding and we welcome postdoc applicants!
April, 2023
Yang lab was delighted to host a family visit and we deeply appreciate the substantial support from the family for our research to fight SCN2A-related disorders.
April, 2023
Surprise party by the lab to celebrate Dr. Yang's promotion to associate professor with tenure! Feeling supper privileged to have a determined team working together to fight human neurological diseases including SCN2A!
April, 2023
Congrats to Maria for giving an exciting seminar talk at BIG10 Neuroscience Seminar series
April, 2023
Yang was invited to give a seminar talk at Northwestern University. Huge thanks to Dr. Jennifer Kearney and Dr. Al George for the invitation!
March, 2023
Yang lab's first-ever Neuroscience Open House Event was a success! Special thanks to Maria for the poster/art design, and all the lab members for the demo!
March, 2023
Yang attended the NIH-funded Training course in Neurotherapeutics Discovery and Development.
Feb, 2023
Yang was invited to review for NIH CNNT study section.
Feb, 2023
We look forward to a productive rabbit year with a growing lab and collaborators to push science closer to a cure.
Jan, 2023
Yang was invited to review NIH Director's Pioneer Award (DP1) as a first-stage reviewer.
2022
Dec, 2022
We have been working around the clock to push science, especially for SCN2A, and achieved a lot in 2022. Now it’s time for our year-end gathering with lab members, friends, and probably future collaborators! We wish everyone a happy and healthy holiday break!
Dec, 2022
Proud to hood Dr. Zhefu (Jeff) Que in the 2022 Purdue Winter Hooding Ceremony. Our lab strives to produce not only scientific knowledge to combat diseases but also future leaders!
Dec, 2022
Our newly minted PhD student Dr. Que discussed how to lead a fulfilling and productive graduate school life to junior students in our Department. You are a role model Jeff!
Dec, 2022
Fantastic to attend American Epilepsy Society annual conference (AES2022) and gave a talk to discuss SCN2A related seizures! Session with Michelle Antoine from NIH, Tasso Tzingounis from University of Connecticut, Matt Weston from Virginia Tech and Lena Nguyen from UT Dallas. Marvelous experience!
Nov, 2022
SfN annual meeting special: Privileged for Yang to talk to hundreds of audiences from all over the world. Of course, we talked about #SCN2A related disorders!
Nov, 2022
SfN annual meeting special: For the first time, Yang was chairing a minisymposium with co-chair Nina Gross to discuss the interface between autism and epilepsy. An amazing set of speakers include Georgia Panagiotakos PhD; Durgesh Tiwari PhD; Tristan Shuman PhD; Carlos Portera-Cailliau MD, PhD; Brielle Ferguson PhD.
Nov, 2022
SfN annual meeting special: We have 4 posters, and each poster has multiple presenters. Almost 4 hours of nonstop presentations to a diverse audience with great interaction. The poster presentation was a huge success.
Nov, 2022
SfN annual meeting special: lab dinner with custom-made menu, a tradition since 2019! We are able to bring almost all lab members to San Diego and had a bowling event this year!
Nov, 2022
Congrats to Maria for the Axion Biosystem Travel Award!
Nov, 2022
Congrats to Jeff for the Axion Biosystem Travel Award!
Nov, 2022
Very pleasant to visit the University of Arizona and gave a seminar talk. Appreciate the invitation and warm welcome from Dr. Todd Vanderah.
Oct, 2022
Yang served as an ad hoc reviewer for the NIH Clinical Neuroplasticity and Neurotransmitters (CNNT) study section, which was at THE Watergate hotel!
Oct, 2022
Great to visit St. Louis and have some fun with Dr. Aubin Moutal.
Sept, 2022
Congrats Dr. Que! 2nd PhD graduated from the lab! Jeff spearheaded the iPSCs models in the lab and made significant contributions to the precision medicine of SCN2A disorders. Great to have another nice lab photo together. Jeff will go to the pharmaceutical industry to push next-generation therapeutics in neuroscience. All the best to your future endeavor Jeff!
Aug, 2022
Had a lovely in-person visit to the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) and gave a seminar talk. Greatly appreciated the invitation from Dr. Hee Jung Chung.
Aug, 2022
Thanks to Dr. Zhong-yin Zhang for the nomination and @Biocrossroads for this Award!
Aug, 2022
Yang presented at Gordon Research Conference: Mechanisms of Epilepsy and Neuronal Synchronization, and met new and old friends! (pictured here Ethan Goldberg and Amy Brewster)!
July, 2022
Yang was honored to give a talk and receive the FamilieSCN2A Foundation 2022 Core Value Award. The trust from the families of the patients means the world to us. We are pumped to build an inclusive team to push the research further!
July, 2022
Yang lab attended the FamilieSCN2A summer seminar. We learned a lot and were inspired by the children and their patients! Our lab work around the clock towards the only END-GAME, which is to find a cure!
July, 2022
Yang gave a talk at Jackson Laboratory for Genomic Medicine. It's an incredible in-person visit. Thanks to Dr. Bill Skarnes for the invitation.
June, 2022
Yang gave a talk at Yale University -- thanks to Dr. Stephen Waxman for the invitation.
June, 2022
Yang gave a talk at the Korea Advanced Institute of Science & Technology (KAIST) -- thanks to Dr. Eunjoon Kim for the invitation.
June, 2022
Yang served as an ad hoc reviewer for the NIH Clinical Neuroplasticity and Neurotransmitters (CNNT) study section.
May, 2022
Yang gave a talk at Gordon Research Conference -- Fragile X and Autism-Related Disorders
May, 2022
Yang gave a talk at Mayo Clinic -- thanks to Drs. Vanda Lennon, Long-jun Wu, and Christopher Klein for the invitation.
May, 2022
Congrats to Yang lab undergraduate students Jacob Paulaskas and Chau Phan, who won the Research talks awards! We are proud of your guys!
April, 2022
Congrats Dr. Eaton! The first PhD graduated from the Y lab. Muriel joined the lab in 2017 and has been an award-winning student with tremendous achievements. Her work on the Scn2a mouse model has been a tour de force, setting the stage for many exciting studies. Muriel took on numerous service roles in the lab and has a huge sense of ownership of what she does. Her spirit and work certainly left a lasting mark in the lab. We can't wait to see the big things Muriel will do next. We will all miss you!
March, 2022
Yang is invited to talk at the minisymposium of the Society for Neuroscience (SfN) annual meeting to be held in San Diego, Nov 2022. Look forward to the exciting program:
"The emerging interface between epilepsy and autism: from shared molecules to common circuitry defects"
March, 2022
Yang is invited to talk at the national American Epilepsy Society (AES) annual meeting to be held in Nashville Dec 2022. A supper interesting program:
"Paradoxical mechanisms of hyperexcitability in epileptic circuits."
March, 2022
Yang served as an ad hoc reviewer for the NIH Clinical Neuroplasticity and Neurotransmitters (CNNT) study section.
Feb, 2022
Feb 24 is the SCN2A Awareness Day and Feb 28 is Rare Disease Day. Yang lab is committed to research in precision medicine for SCN2A disorders and other forms of rare and common diseases. Our lab is expanding and we welcome applicants!
Feb, 2022
Yang served as a first-stage reviewer for the NIH Director's Pioneer Award Program (DP1).
Jan, 2022
We are glad to receive funding from the Clinical and Translational Science Institute (CTSI) of the Indiana State Department of Health to study traumatic brain injury and autism.
2021
Dec, 2021
Thrilled to see our paper is featured on the Cover of The Journal of Neuroscience and "this week in the journal". Really our big honor and privilege. Congrats to co-first authors Jeff and Maria!
Nov, 2021
Yang lab has a group dinner to celebrate the achievements of our postdocs, graduate students, and undergraduate students.
Nov, 2021
Congrats to Muriel for winning the prestigious Jenkins-Knevel Award for Excellence in Research from Purdue College of Pharmacy and giving a fanatics talk about her thesis work!
Nov, 2021
Yang met the CEO and CTO of Axion Biosystems and strengthened relationship with our industry partners.
Nov, 2021
Yang visited Emory University and gave a seminar talk. Photo with a good friend Asheebo.
Oct, 2021
Yang visited Cincinnati Children's Hospital/the University of Cincinnati and gave a seminar talk. Thanks to Dr. Christina (Nina) Gross for the invitation!
Oct, 2021
Yang served as an ad hoc reviewer for the NIH Clinical Neuroplasticity and Neurotransmitters (CNNT) study section.
Aug, 2021
Yang lab attended PULSe graduate students recruitment poster event. Looking for multiple PhD students to join the lab!
Aug, 2021
Really privileged to see this insightful spotlight preview by Dr. Leonard Kaczmarek discussing Dr. Bender and our recent back-to-back publications, published in a prestigious review journal "Trends in Neurosciences"! Being previewed is a big honor for any papers and we are humbled to receive this recognization. Feeling unreal but super excited that our works may redefine Action Potential 101!
Aug, 2021
Textbook dogma suggests that inadequacy of sodium channels results in impaired neuronal excitability. Jingliang's potential paradigm-shifting work, just published in Cell Reports, however, shows that severe deficiency in sodium channel Nav1.2 leads to unexpected hyperexcitability in neurons. Our paper is a back-to-back publication with a paper from Dr. Kevin Bender at UCSF, illustrating the beauty of open science. Big Congrats to Jingliang and the team!
July, 2021
Very humbled to receive our 2nd 5-year NIH R01 to study voltage-gated sodium channel Nav1.2 related neuronal hyperexcitability and seizures. It was wonderful to see the 2nd one coming during the Independence Day weekend, which was symbolic, certainly giving us huge independence to pursue our research goals! Thanks to all our lab members who made this possible. Special shout out to Jingliang for collecting exciting but "strange" results, which was the basis of this Award. The "strange data" eventually turned out to be paradigm-shifting and allowed us to challenge the current dogma!
July, 2021
Our collaborative project with pharmaceutical company Eli Lilly was published and featured on the cover of Pharmaceutical Research, an official journal of the American Association of Pharmaceutical Scientists. We helped to develop an in vitro sensory neuron-based assays to understand the nociceptive potential of pharmaceutical buffer systems used for injectable biologics. A well-tolerated buffer system is essential for drug formulation to develop successful medications to treat many diseases including cancers. Congrats to Muriel and Jeff for leading the effort and getting the work done!
June, 2021
Grateful to NIA for funding Alzheimer’s-Focused Administrative Supplements for us to work with Dr. Darci Trader and Dr. Cheng-deng Hu on innovative AD research using human induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs). Special thanks to Jeff and Maria for spearheading the iPSCs wing of the lab.
June, 2021
Yang served as an ad hoc reviewer for the NIH Clinical Neuroplasticity and Neurotransmitters (CNNT) study section.
April, 2021
Our lab's first 5-year R01 to study Scn2a deficiency related to autism was funded by NINDS! It is truly a group effect from all lab members, but special thanks go to Jingliang and Muriel!
April, 2021
Our first paper of the unique gene trap mouse model of Scn2a deficiency was published and featured on the cover of Genes, Brain and Behaviors, the official journal of the International Behavioural and Neural Genetics Society. Many exciting studies to follow using this important mouse model. Check out Muriel's paper!
Jan, 2021
Excited to receive funding from PIDD-PIIN Alzheimer's disease and other dementias program to generate human microglia from induced pluripotent stem cells to study the interaction between microglia and neurons! Thanks to Jeff and Maria for laying the groundwork for this study!
2020
Oct, 2020
We are grateful to receive the 2020 Action Potential Grant from the FamilieSCN2A Foundation to advance gene therapy of SCN2A related disorders! Way to go Muriel!
Feb, 2020
Yang served as an early stage reviewer for the NIH Clinical Neuroplasticity and Neurotransmitters (CNNT) study section.
Feb, 2020
Special thanks to Dr. Aaron Bowman for including us in his Alzheimer's Disease R01 as a co-investigator
Jan, 2020
Maria attended the Stanford Human Brain Organogenesis Workshop in Palo Alto, California.
2019
Oct, 2019
Y Lab presented four posters in Society for Neuroscience annual meeting and had a memorable Y Lab dinner with friends.
Oct, 2019
Y Lab hosted the visit of Dr. Guoping Feng for Purdue 150th Ideas Festival.
August, 2019
Yang attended 3rd FamilieSCN2A foundation conference in Seattle.
June, 2019
Shirong attended the Allen Brain Institute Neuropixels workshop in Seattle
May, 2019
Congratulations to Jeff and Muriel for passing their Original Proposal and Anthony for being awarded the Lynn Fellowship.
Goodbyes and good thoughts to Yuansong and Tiange as they leave Purdue!
February, 2019
Thanks to Angie and Purdue professional photographer for taking beautiful pictures of our lab!
February, 2019
Celebrating Chinese New Years!
2018
November, 2018
Chris presented at the Purdue Undergraduate Research Symposium
October, 2018
Pharmacy Graduate/Post-Doc retreat
September, 2018
Our space in DLR is now officially open! We will take the next giant leaps!
September, 2018
Celebrating Muriel's birthday!
August, 2018
Y Lab in beautiful DLR space is functional!
July, 2018
Getting ready to move to brand new space in Hall for Discovery and Learning Research (DLR)
April, 2018
Undergraduate Research Poster Symposium
April, 2018
Congrats to Muriel for wining the prestigious NSF fellowship!
March, 2018
Celebrating Dr. Yang's birthday
February, 2018
Celebrating Chinese New Year
February, 2018
MCMP graduate student recruitment
2017
Yang lab major equipment in place
Multielectrode Array (MEA recording system), patch-clamp and live cell imaging setup
Sept, 2017
Y lab swing space at RHPH
Sept, 2017
Farewell Yale; Hello Purdue
