Dr. Piao is the director of the Newborn Brain Research Institute and a Professor at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF). She received her Ph.D. from the University of Toronto and completed a postdoctoral fellowship with Dr. Chris Walsh at Harvard Medical School. She and her mentor discovered that germline loss-of-function mutations in the adhesion G-protein-coupled receptor (aGPCR) ADGRG1, also called GPR56, cause a specific human brain malformation. Following the thread of ADGRG1 biology led to a vigorous bench research program that uncovered a remarkable diversity of cell type- and ligand-specific functions of GPR56 during brain development, homeostasis, and disease, as well as provided foundational knowledge for drug discoveries in targeting aGPCRs, the second largest human GPCR family. In 2019, Dr. Piao was recruited from Harvard Medical School to UCSF to direct the Newborn Brain Research Institute and assume the Benioff Professorship in Children’s Health. Her research program has evolved to focus on a distinctly understudied topic: the neuroimmune interplay in human brain development and degeneration.

To learn more, visit the Piao Lab website.