Dayu Lin

Dayu Lin, Professor of the Department of Psychiatry and Department of Neuroscience and Physiology New York University Grossman School of Medicine, has studied the neural mechanisms underlying the generation of social behaviors, especially aggression and parental behaviors for the last 20 years. Her studies investigate the neural circuits driving and modulating those behaviors, as well as the neural plasticity in the circuits that alters the behaviors based on social experiences and reproductive states. Her works have resulted in the identification of over 10 molecularly distinct neural populations essential for aggression, social avoidance, parental care, infanticide, sexual receptivity, and predator defense.

She received a B.S. in biological sciences from Fudan University in China. In 2006, she received her Ph.D. in Neurobiology from Duke University, working with late Dr. Larry Katz to investigate the neural representation of natural olfactory cues in the main olfactory bulb. She then joined Dr. David Anderson’s group at the California Institute of Technology as a postdoctoral fellow, investigating the neural substrates essential for the generation of aggression. In 2010, she started her research group as an assistant professor in the Smilow Neuroscience Program at New York University Langone Medical Center, which was later merged into the newly established Neuroscience Institute. She has received several awards, including Capranica Award for Outstanding Achievement in the Field of Neuroethology, Klingenstein Fellowship Award in the Neurosciences, Sloan Research Fellowship Award, Janett Rosenberg Trubatch Career Development Award, Irma T. Hirschl Career Scientist Award, and McKnight Scholar Award.