Student Mentee(s):  Amen Saad

Li-Chun (Queena) Lin obtained her Ph.D. in Neurobiology in the Etienne Sibille Lab, Center for Neuroscience at the University of Pittsburgh, where she focused on the selective neuronal vulnerability in brain disorders, including various interneurons in Major Depressive Disorder. As a Tau Consortium Postdoctoral Fellow supported by Rainwater Charitable Foundation at UCSF with Dr. Bill Seeley, she focused on the neuropathology of von Economo neurons in Frontotemporal dementia and Alzheimer’s Disease. She has always worked on a wide range of topics. As the founding director of the Iowa NeuroBank Core at the University of Iowa, she establishes core services and engages in scholarly research and educational activities. She plays a central role in leading the human brain biobanking and spatial transcriptomic technology pipelines to enable spatial gene profiling, such as the 10X Genomics Visium Spatial Transcriptomics and Vizgen MERSCOPE platforms for a better understanding of the basic biology in the human brain and the impact of brain disorders. These new platform capabilities enable an exceptional breadth of knowledge to study local changes of gene expression in any tissue sections and to identify what cell types are impacted by any diseases, including brains, eyes, and tumors. Queena has also focused on mentoring students that work with her in the NeuroBank Core, including 4 ICRU fellows. In addition to winning the Cutting-Edge Award from the John Pappajohn Entrepreneurial Center with her student in 2021, Dr. Lin has also won the 2022 Distinguished mentor award from the Iowa Center for Research by Undergraduates, with recognition by the Office of the Vice President for Research at its annual Discovery and Innovation Awards reception.

Student Mentee: Gabrielene Dennis