Chih-Ying Su

Chih-Ying Su is a Taiwan-born American neurobiologist who left her tenured position as Professor and Vice Chair of Neurobiology at the University of California San Diego (UCSD) in July 2026 to join the Shenzhen Medical Academy of Research and Translation (SMART) as a full-time Senior Principal Investigator, after nearly 30 years in the United States.

Su earned her B.A. in Zoology from National Taiwan University before moving to the US in 2000 to pursue a PhD in Neuroscience at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, completing it in 2006. She then conducted postdoctoral research at Yale University before joining UCSD in 2013, where she was named a Hellman Fellow in 2015, became assistant professor of neurobiology in 2020, and rose to full professor and department vice chair in 2024.

Su's lab uses fruit flies and mosquitoes, including Aedes aegypti, as model organisms to study how olfactory receptor neurons process odour information and how neuromodulators dynamically shape sensory circuits and behaviour. Her research has been published in Nature, Neuron, Nature Communications, and PNAS. She cited SMART's "advanced hardware conditions," strong academic atmosphere, and the leadership of SMART president Yan Ning as key reasons for her move. A former taekwondo team captain, Su decided to join SMART at the end of 2025.