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ABOUT THE PRINCIPLE INVESTIGATOR

Dr. Weizhe Hong is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Biological Chemistry and the Department of Neurobiology at UCLA School of Medicine. Dr. Hong received a B.S. degree in biological sciences at Tsinghua University. When he was in high school and college, he worked with Zengyi Chang, on mechanisms of protein folding and microbial stress response, first at Tsinghua University and then at Peking University. He received his PhD degree in 2012 at Stanford University, under the guidance of Liqun Luo. His PhD research focused on the cellular and molecular mechanisms of wiring specificity during olfactory system development. He was a Helen Hay Whitney Fellow in David Anderson's Laboratory at the California Institute of Technology, working on neural mechanisms underlying social and emotional behaviors. Dr. Hong received the Genetics Society of America’s Larry Sandler Memorial Award for the best PhD dissertation on the Drosophila research, and presented the Larry Katz Memorial Lecture in the Cold Spring Harbor Conference for the best PhD dissertation on neural circuit research.

Education/training:
2012–2015     Postdoc                California Institute of Technology
2006–2012     Ph.D.                      Stanford University
2002–2006     B.S. in Biology    Tsinghua University

Recent awards:
2017    Searle Scholar Award, Searle Scholars Program
2017    Sloan Research Fellowship, Alfred P. Sloan Foundation
2016    NARSAD Young Investigator Award, Brain and Behavior Research Foundation
2013    Helen Hay Whitney Fellowship
2013    Category Winner in Developmental Biology, Science and SciLifeLab Prize for Young Scientist
2013    Larry Sandler Memorial Award, Genetics Society of America
2013    Larry Katz Memorial Lecture, Cold Spring Harbor

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