Yingxi Lin.

Yingxi Li

Professor of psychiatry and neuroscience
University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center

Yingxi Li is professor of psychiatry and neuroscience, and chief of the Psychiatry Neuroscience Research Division at University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center. Her research focuses on uncovering molecular and circuit mechanisms in neurodevelopment, memory formation and neuropsychiatric conditions. Employing a broad array of multidisciplinary experimental techniques, work in her lab spans analyses from the genomic and molecular level to synapse, circuit and whole-animal behavioral levels.

Originally from China, Lin studied engineering physics at Tsinghua University and received her Ph.D. in biophysics from Harvard University. She conducted her postdoctoral research under Michael Greenberg at Harvard Medical School. She was assistant professor from 2009 to 2015 and associate professor from 2015 to 2018 at the McGovern Institute for Brain Research at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Prior to her current role, she was full professor and director of the Neuroscience Graduate Program at SUNY Upstate Medical University.

Explore more from The Transmitter

Hands cut a ribbon.

What Trump’s psychedelics executive order means for basic neuroscience

The order provides a potential path to remove some psychedelic drugs from the strictest regulatory category, yet it “may not be the breakthrough the basic research community has been looking for,” says neuroscientist Shawn Lockery.

By Calli McMurray
24 April 2026 | 4 min read
Research image visualizing neuronal activity.

Switching neural code may solve ongoing face-recognition debate

Face patch cells in macaque monkeys initially respond to images of any object but rapidly transition to attend to faces exclusively, a new study finds.

By Holly Barker
23 April 2026 | 5 min read

Liset de la Prida explains how neuron subtypes may control the activity of large neural populations, from manifolds to ripples

De la Prida's work analyzing the varieties of sharp wave ripples in the hippocampus led to her discovery that specific types of neurons control the properties of neural manifolds.

By Paul Middlebrooks
22 April 2026 | 104 min listen