Lab Members

Yi-Rong Peng, PhD
Principle Investigator

Dr Peng is a neuroscientist whose research focuses on large-scale transcriptomic profiling of retinal cells in healthy and pathological conditions to understand human vision and provide insights for the study of ocular diseases. She joined the Jules Stein Eye Institute as an assistant professor in January 2020. Dr. Peng received her PhD in neurobiology from the Institute of Neuroscience, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shanghai, China.

Her doctoral research examined the role of functional interactions between inhibitory and excitatory synapses that maintain the stability of neural networks. She then joined the laboratory of Dr. Joshua Sanes at Harvard University. In her postdoctoral work, she leveraged high throughput single-cell transcriptomic methods to uncover key transcriptional factors that control the specification of retinal cell types. At the Jules Stein Eye Institute she will continue to develop state-of-the-art transcriptomic and genomic tools to uncover the molecular underpinnings of the formation of retinal circuits and the pathogenesis of retinal diseases.  [Download CV]

Peng Laboratory at UCLA Stein Eye Institute