Yang Dan | |
|---|---|
| Born | Beijing, China |
| Alma mater | Peking University Columbia University |
| Known for | Optogenetics |
| Spouse | Mu-ming Poo |
| Awards | Alfred P Sloan Research Fellowship, Beckman Young Investigator Award, Edward M. Scolnick Prize, Peter Seeburg Integrative Neuroscience Prize |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Neuroscience |
| Institutions | University of California, Berkeley |
Yang Dan (Chinese: 扬; pinyin: Dān Yáng) is a Chinese-American neuroscientist. She is the Paul Licht Distinguished Professor of Neurobiology at the University of California, Berkeley and a Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) Investigator.[1] She is a past recipient of the Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellowship, Beckman Young Investigator Award, and Society for Neuroscience Research Awards for Innovation in Neuroscience.[2] Recognized for her research on the neural circuits that control behavior, she was elected to the US National Academy of Sciences in 2018.
Dan's current research is focused on understanding the neural circuits that control sleep in the mammalian brain, as well as how the "frontal cortex exerts top-down executive control."Dan uses the mouse as her model organism combined with optogenetics, imaging, virus-mediated circuit tracing, and electrophysiology.[3]