Wei Lu

Wei Lu (卢伟) is a senior neurobiologist who left a tenured senior investigator post at the US National Institutes of Health (NIH) in May 2025 to join the Shenzhen Medical Academy of Research and Translation (SMART) as a senior principal investigator and deputy director of its Institute of Neuromodulation and Cognition. His departure came amid drastic Trump administration funding cuts to university and government research budgets.

Lu earned his PhD from New York University under Edward Ziff, followed by postdoctoral training at UCSF with Roger Nicoll. He then spent over a decade as a principal investigator and later senior investigator at NIH's National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS), studying the neurobiological mechanisms of synaptic development and functional regulation, as well as anxiety, depression, anesthesia, and alcohol effects.

SMART president Yan Ning noted that Lu had "officially agreed to come to Shenzhen long before President Donald Trump's second term," underscoring that his decision predated the funding cuts. His identification of previously unknown synaptic regulatory proteins holds promise for new therapeutic strategies targeting insomnia, anxiety, depression, and addiction.