Dr. Mingshan Xue, a Carolina DeLuca scholar and researcher at the Jan and Dan Duncan Neurological Research Institute at Texas Children’s, has been awarded the Janett Rosenberg Trubatch Career Development Award.
This award is conferred by the Society for Neuroscience, the world’s largest professional organization of neuroscientists and physicians dedicated to understanding the brain and the nervous system. The award recognizes two early-career scientists for their originality and creativity in neuroscience research.
Xue was recognized for his significant contributions to the study of cortical circuits. As a graduate student at Baylor College of Medicine, he demonstrated that a protein that regulates neurotransmitter release performs opposite functions in mammals and fruit fly models, highlighting the importance of species differences while also explaining how this and other proteins are able to control neurotransmitter release.
His current research focuses on the balance of excitatory and inhibitory signaling in the cortex, and how this balance is disrupted in neurological disorders like autism spectrum disorder and epilepsy.
Xue, an assistant professor in the Department of Neuroscience at Baylor, received this prestigious honor during the Society for Neuroscience’s annual conference in October.