My name is Pingchuan Ma. I’m a PhD student in Dr. Yao Chen’s lab at Department of Neuroscience, Washington University in St. Louis (WUSTL). I’m also a McDonnell scholar of the McDonnell International Scholars Academy at WUSTL.

I grew up in Dongying, Shandong Province of China. I attended college at Peking University, Beijing, where I got my Bachelor of Medicine degree in 2016. After college I spent one year at Harvard Medical School, Boston, and worked in Southern University of Science and Technology, Shenzhen, for one year.

During college and one year in Shenzhen, I worked on peripheral mechanisms of chronic pain under the mentorship of Dr. Xuejun Song. During in Boston, I was a visiting scholar in Dr. Isaac Chiu’s lab, working on neuro-immune interactions in the gut.

Currently I’m in Dr. Yao Chen’s lab, my research interest is the context dependent neuromodulation actions in the brain and how they impact neuronal functions and behaviors.

Find more information about me from Google Scholar, Researchgate, and the McDonnell Academy.