THE PI

Shaojie Ma, Ph.D. （马少捷）

mashaojie@ion.ac.cn

Shaojie Ma obtained his B.S. degree in Biotechnology at Shanghai JiaoTong University in 2017. Upon graduation, he pursued his Ph.D. degree in Genetics at Yale University under the supervision of Dr. Nenad Sestan and received his Ph.D. degree in 2022. From 2022 to 2024, he worked as a Postdoctoral Associate at Yale University and was appointed as the bioinformatics group lead of Sestan lab. In February 2024, he joined the Institute of Neuroscience (CEBSIT) at the Chinese Academy of Sciences as an Investigator and Lab Head. His research interest is to understand the molecular and cellular mechanisms governing the development, evolution, and dysfunctions of the primate brains.

Lab Manager

Mengni Chen （陈梦旎）

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. 

Graduate student

Xurui Feng （冯旭蕊）

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 interests focus on the intrinsic and extrinsic regulation of the pace of neuronal development and the mechanisms underlying related neurodevelopmental disorders.

zongyu liu    (刘宗毓)

Zongyu Liu received his B.S. in Biomedical Science from the Zhejiang University-University of Edinburgh Institute in 2023. He is currently pursuing his PhD at the Institute of Neuroscience, Chinese Academy of Sciences. His research investigates gene regulatory network dynamics during the postnatal development of the primate neocortex. Specifically, he explores the regulatory programs that drive critical developmental inflection points, as well as potential species-specific differences.

Mingjuan Li    (李明娟)

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    (李星杰)

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    (田甜)

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     (王菁欣)

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

Yue Wan  （弯月）

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.

Visiting student

Haoming Wu     (吴昊明)

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

Research Assistant

           

Jie Gao  （高杰）

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 Insititute of Neuroscience (CEBSIT) at Chinese Academy of Sciences. His research interest is to investigate the molecular mechanisms underlying disease and brain development through bioinformatics approaches, such as single-cell and spatial omics analyses.

xiang huang     (黄湘)

Huang Xiang, Assistant Engineer Level I, skilled in molecular cloning, gene editing, and tissue imaging. Currently, I am assisting in establishing and setting up our new laboratory。My research focus on exploring the spatiotemporal expression pattern and functional role of FOXP2 in the developing primate cerebral cortex.

mengqiang Wang     (王梦倩)

Mengqian Wang graduated from Shenyang Aerospace University in Computer Science, spending the last two years in joint training at the Shenzhen Institutes of Advanced Technology. My core research focuses on graph neural networks (GNNs) and Transformer architectures for biological applications, specializing in algorithmically modeling cellular communication to explore its role in brain development, decipher intercellular signaling mechanisms and downstream gene regulatory networks. My work unlocks AI’s potential in cell niche analysis and brain development research, providing data-driven support for neuroscience mechanism exploration.

Yan Wang     (王焱)

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

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