Yutian Wang-INSTITUTE FOR TRANSLATIONAL BRAIN RESEARCH

Yutian Wang

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Yutian Wang Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada

Neural Information Processing and Neurological Diseases

Yu Tian Wang is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, a Distinguished Professor at Fudan University, a SANS (Shanghai Academy of Natural Sciences) Senior Scholar and the Director of the Fudan Shangsi Center for Neuroscience. He earned his B.Med. and Master's degrees from Shandong University Medical School in 1982 and 1985, and his Ph.D. from Memorial University of Newfoundland, Canada, in 1992. From 1992 to 2001, he held positions as a Postdoctoral Fellow, Assistant Professor, and Associate Professor in Faculty of Medicine at the University of Toronto. Subsequently, until 2020, he served as a Tenured Professor and the BC & Y Stroke Research Chair in the Department of Medicine at the University of British Columbia (UBC), Canada. Upon returning to China, he held the position of Chair Professor and the inaugural Dean at the School of Life and Health Sciences, Shenzhen University of Advanced Technology. He joined Fudan University in July 2025.

His research primarily focuses on the mechanisms underlying the generation and modulation of synaptic transmission and plasticity, particularly the molecular mechanisms of regulating postsynaptic neurotransmitter receptor trafficking, dynamic surface expression, and their crucial roles in the brain function and pathogenesis and progression of major neurological disorders, as well as the development of novel therapeutics. He was the first to report that the NMDA type glutamate receptor is functionally regulated by tyrosine phosphorylation. He pioneered the discovery that the rapid trafficking of GABA_A and AMPA receptors to and from the postsynaptic synaptic membrane surface is a critical and effective mechanism of regulating synaptic efficacy, thereby revealing a new set of mechanisms regulating synaptic plasticity. By developing peptide inhibitors that block receptor trafficking, he further elucidated the mechanisms of synaptic plasticity and its role in learning and memory. He clarified the differential mediation of synaptic plasticity and neuronal survival/death by distinct GluN2A and GluN2B subunit-containing NMDA receptors, and has thereby developed several novel therapeutics targeting these subunit-specific NMDAR signaling pathways.

Over the years, he has published more than 180 articles in the field of medical neuroscience, with a Google Scholar citation count exceeding 45,000 and an h-index of 78. Many of these publications have appeared in prestigious scientific journals, including Science, Nature, Cell, Neuron, Nature Neuroscience, Nature Medicine, Nature Genetics, Nature Communications, and PNAS.

He has received numerous accolades from the Canadian federal and provincial governments. Since 2001, he has held a Heart and Stroke Foundation of Canada Research Chair at UBC. He was a Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) International Research Scholar in 2002 and 2006. In 2006, he was inducted into the Royal Society of Canada (Academy of Sciences).

Other Honors and Awards:

• Innovation Award, Canadian College of Neuropsychopharmacology

• Killam Professor, University of British Columbia

• Distinguished University Scholar, University of British Columbia

• UBC Killam Research Prize

• Annual Distinguished Physiologist Award, Canadian Physiological Society

• VHHSC Martin Hoffman Excellence in Research Award, UBC

• Senior Scholar, Michael Smith Foundation for Health Research

• Premier's Excellence Research Award, Government of Ontario

• CIHR Investigator Award

• EJLB Foundation Scholar Award

• MacDonald Scholar Award (awarded to the highest-rated HSFC Research Scholar annually)

• Medical Research Council of Canada Studentship

• Research Fellowship, Heart and Stroke Foundation of Canada

• Fellowship, Medical Research Council of Canada

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To investigate the mechanisms underlying the generation and processing of information in the mammalian central nervous system, with specific focuses on:

1) Elucidating the molecular mechanisms regulating synaptic transmission and plasticity;

2) Investigating the role of alterations in these mechanisms in neural development, and the formation, consolidation, and regression of neural circuit connectivity;

3) Exploring their contributions to the pathogenesis and progression of major brain disorders;

4) Facilitating the translation of mechanistic insights into clinical applications by developing novel diagnostic and therapeutic strategies for brain disorders including memory impairments, stroke, Parkinson's and Alzheimer's diseases.