Biography
Shasha Zhang, Ph.D. joined the University of Michigan in 2022 as an assistant research scientist in the Department of Neurology.
Dr. Shasha Zhang obtained her doctoral degree from Peking University in Beijing, China. During her Ph.D. training in Dr. Yi Rao's lab, she focused on unraveling the genetic mechanisms underlying maternal and sexual behavior in female mice. Her research revealed the crucial role of 5-HT in both sexual preference and maternal behavior in female mice. Driven by her passion for discovering new drug targets, she subsequently joined Dr. Alejandro Alvarado's lab as a postdoctoral researcher. There, she employed nonbiased RNAi screening techniques to identify key genes associated with reproductive system regeneration. Additionally, she played a pivotal role in constructing the BAC library for the sexual planarian species, Schmidtea mediterranea.
In 2017, Dr. Shasha Zhang joined the lab of Dr. William Yang at UCLA, where she served as the leading project scientist. She led the team to systematically investigate the function of DNA repair genes in the Huntington’s disease (HD) mouse model. Additionally, she played a vital role in developing a pipeline for high throughput neuron pathology analysis using the genetic Golgi labeling method.
Areas of Interest
Neurodegenerative disease, mouse genetics, and confocal microscopy.
