Lu Sun, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor | Department of Molecular Biology
Dr. Sun is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Molecular Biology at UT Southwestern Medical Center. He obtained his bachelor’s degree in Biological Sciences from Tsinghua University and earned his Ph.D. in Neuroscience from the Johns Hopkins University.
As a graduate student in Dr. Alex Kolodkin’s laboratory, he discovered key molecular mechanisms that wire visual circuits (Sun et al., Science 2013; Riccomagno*, Sun* et al., Neuron 2014; Sun et al., Neuron 2015). As a postdoctoral fellow mentored by Dr. Ben Barres and co-mentored by Dr. Liqun Luo at Stanford University, he focused on neuron-glia interactions and identified novel mechanisms that govern spatiotemporal specificity of central nervous system myelination (Sun et al, Cell 2018). Dr. Sun won the Paul Ehrlich Research Award (the Johns Hopkins University) and the Sammy Kuo Neuroscience Award (3rd place, Stanford University) for the recognitions of his graduate and postdoctoral work, respectively.
In 2020, Lu Joined the faculty at UT Southwestern to establish the glial biology laboratory in the Department of Molecular Biology. Lu has been awarded with several fellowships including the Helen Hay Whitney Postdoctoral Fellowship, the National Multiple Sclerosis Society Career Transition Award, and the NIH Pathway to Independent Award (K99/R00). As an Assistant Professor, Lu received the UT System Rising STARs Award, the 2020 BBRF Young Investigator Award (NARSAD Award), the 2021 NIH Director's Innovator Award (DP2 Award), the 2023 Klingenstein-Simons Fellowship Award in Neuroscience, and the 2023 Chan Zuckerberg Initiative Ben Barres Early Career Acceleration Award.