Yanning Rui, PhD

Biography

Dr. Rui received her Ph.D. from Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, where she mainly focused on elucidating the signaling pathways that are related to development. She published her graduate research work as first authors in multiple prestigious journals including two papers in Developmental Cell and one in EMBO Journal. In pursuit of her Ph.D., she received the Graduate Student Research Award, an honor given to an exceptionally productive junior researcher.

She completed her initial post-doctoral training in genetics by working with Dr. Norbert Perrimon, a HHMI Investigator at Harvard Medical School. Her research work, which listed her as a corresponding author, was published in PLoS Genetics. Later, she focused on dissecting the molecular mechanism of selective autophagy, a fundamental cellular pathway essential for preserving homeostasis that has been linked to a variety of human diseases. She discovered the first mammalian scaffold protein for selective autophagy and first-authored an article in Nature Cell Biology detailing this finding, She also developed a new approach for monitoring proteotoxicity-induced selective autophagy, which she outlined in a publication of Autophagy. Her extraordinary research productivity has been recognized by the research committee in McGovern Medical School, and she received the Dean’s Excellence in Postdoctoral Research Award. Currently, she is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Neurosurgery and focuses on dissecting the role of autophagy/selective autophagy in cerebrovascular diseases.