Yifan earned a Ph.D. in Neuroscience at UCL with Professor Dame Linda Partridge FRS. During his graduate studies, he identified the mingled molecular mechanisms underlying Alzheimer’s disease and ageing. He received his first postdoc training at UC San Diego with Professor Roberto Malinow. In the Malinow lab, his research focused on synaptic dysfunction in Alzheimer’s disease and depression using whole-cell patch-clamp recordings.

Yifan is interested in combing optrode recordings, Neuropixels recordings, a closed-loop system, and widefield voltage imaging to study the role of ripples in depression and spatial navigation. He is also developing a novel multi-region imaging system that allows concurrent cholinergic imaging and fMRI.

·         Yifan Yu, Teresa Niccoli, Ziyu Ren, Nathaniel S Woodling, Benjamin Aleyakpo, Gyorgy Szabadkai, Linda Partridge, “PICALM rescues glutamatergic neurotransmission, behavioural function and survival in a Drosophila model of Abeta42 toxicity”, Hum Mol Genet, 2020, DOI: 10.1093/hmg/ddaa125