Tong Lab News

January 26, 2026

Yuhan Cao received Presidents’ Research Scholarship on 1/26/2026. The endowment support exceptional graduate school students who are making excellent progress and who are carrying out research in areas designated by the graduate school Deans.

October 9, 2025

Emma C Wheeler received the PHD fellowship on 10/9/2025. The T32 program is open to PhD (including MD/PhD) predoctoral students from across all UTHealth Houston schools and postdoctoral trainees at UTHealth Houston and MD Anderson Cancer Center who meet the eligibility criteria.

August 10, 2022

Summer student Michelle He had her last day in lab after spending the summer learning all about neuroscience research with Dr. Zhiying Jiang. We hope Michelle will return to visit in the future!

December 8, 2021

The Tong lab celebrated the end of the year with bowling and dinner. We wish everyone a safe and happy holiday season!

July 23, 2021

An ice cream party was the perfect way to say goodbye to our two summer undergrad students, Anirudh Gadicherla and Jessica Huang, as well as to post doc Dr. Santosh Mandal, who is switching focuses to study glioblastomas. We wish everyone the best of luck on the upcoming school year and all their next adventures!

July 7, 2021

The Tong lab would like to congratulate former member Dr. Ryan Cassidy for winning the graduate school 2020 Dissertation Award for his dissertation Hypothalamic Circuits Mediating Consumption and Anxiety. He will be recognized for this achievement at the Presidents’ Research Scholar Symposium in August.

June 24, 2021

Congrats to Jessie Morrill for winning the TL1 Top Poster award at the 2021 ACTS Conference!

June 23, 2021

Congrats to Jing Cai for being named one of the recipients of the 2021-2022 Russell and Diana Hawkins Family Foundation Discovery Fellowship!

June 14, 2021

The Tong lab would like to congratulate Dr. Hongli Li on the successful defense of her dissertation! While we’re sad to see her go, we wish her well on all of her future endeavors.

May 11, 2021

Congrats to the Tong lab for the publication of their newest paper, “A neural basis for brain leptin action on reducing type 1 diabetic hyperglycemia,” in Nature Communications! The research was also featured in the official weekly newsletter of the McGovern Medical School: https://med.uth.edu/blog/2021/06/24/tongs-research-on-reducing-diabetic-hyperglycemia-published-in-nature-communications/

March 2, 2021

Congrats to Jessie Morrill and Jing Cai for winning first and third place at the Graduate Student Education Committee Poster Competition at the virtual McGovern Medical School Research Retreat!

January 25, 2021

The Tong lab is excited to welcome Dr. Yanyan Jiang as a new postdoc! Her research will focus on the central regulation of energy homeostasis.