People

Mengni Chen received her M.A. degree in Sociology from Shanghai University of Finance and Economics. In 2025, she joined Dr. Ma's lab as a lab manager at the Institute of Neuroscience (CEBSIT), Chinese Academy of Sciences.

Xurui Feng received her bachelor's degree in Biotechnology from Huazhong University of Science and Technology. She is currently a graduate student in computational biology at the Ma Lab, Center for Excellence in Brain Science and Intelligence Technology, Chinese Academy of Sciences. Her research focuses on the intrinsic and extrinsic regulation of neuronal developmental pace and related neurodevelopmental disorders.

Zongyu Liu received his B.S. in Biomedical Science from the Zhejiang University-University of Edinburgh Institute in 2023. He is currently pursuing his Ph.D. at the Institute of Neuroscience, Chinese Academy of Sciences. His research investigates gene regulatory network dynamics during postnatal development of the primate neocortex, with an emphasis on developmental inflection points and potential species-specific differences.

Mingjuan Li received her B.E. in Pharmaceutical Engineering and B.S. in Business Administration from China Pharmaceutical University in 2019. She subsequently earned her M.S. in Medical Neurobiology from Peking University in 2022, focusing on the etiology of autism.

Xingjie Li completed her undergraduate studies in Clinical Medicine at the Second Clinical Medical College of Lanzhou University from 2016 to 2021. From 2021 to 2024, she pursued a Master's degree in Neurology at the West China School of Medicine, Sichuan University.

Tian Tian graduated from Central South University in 2025 with a bachelor's degree in Basic Medicine and is currently a graduate student at the Center for Excellence in Brain Science and Intelligence Technology (CEBSIT), Chinese Academy of Sciences.

Jingxin Wang obtained a Bachelor's degree in Medicine from Sun Yat-sen University in 2022. Her doctoral research focuses on developing deep learning models for multi-omics data integration to identify genomic regulatory regions and decode dynamic regulatory mechanisms during primate evolution and development.

Yue Wan earned her Bachelor of Medicine in Basic Medical Sciences from Sichuan University in 2024. In the same year, she joined the Institute of Neuroscience (CEBSIT), Chinese Academy of Sciences, as a graduate student in Dr. Ma's lab.

Haoming Wu received his Master's degree in Electronic Information from the University of Shanghai for Science and Technology in 2023. He started his Ph.D. studies at the University of Vigo, Spain, in October 2024. In January 2025, he joined the group as a joint Ph.D. student. His current research focuses on the structural and functional organization of the thalamus.

Jie Gao obtained his B.S. degree in Biological Sciences at University of Science and Technology of China in 2023. In 2024, he joined Shaojie Ma's lab as a research assistant in the Institute of Neuroscience (CEBSIT), Chinese Academy of Sciences. His research interest is to investigate molecular mechanisms underlying disease and brain development through bioinformatics approaches, including single-cell and spatial omics analyses.

Xiang Huang is an Assistant Engineer Level I skilled in molecular cloning, gene editing, and tissue imaging. She assists in establishing the new laboratory and focuses on the spatiotemporal expression pattern and functional role of FOXP2 in the developing primate cerebral cortex.

Mengqian Wang graduated from Shenyang Aerospace University in Computer Science and spent two years in joint training at the Shenzhen Institutes of Advanced Technology. Her research focuses on graph neural networks and Transformer architectures for biological applications, including algorithmic modeling of cellular communication in brain development.

Yan Wang obtained her Master's degree in Neuroscience from Xiangya School of Medicine, Central South University in 2025. She is now a staff member in Dr. Ma's lab at the Institute of Neuroscience, with expertise in primate brain anatomy.