Xuecai Ge, PhD
Assistant Professor, Molecular and Cell Biology
Email: xge2@ucmerced.edu
Office: Science and Engineer Building 1, room 260

Xuecai studied Drosophila neurobiology at Tsinghua University (Beijing) before migrating to the US to complete her doctorate at Harvard University. With supervision under Dr. Li-Huei Tsai, Dr. Ge’s thesis entailed embryonic neurogenesis in the neocortex. This work revealed how microcephaly- and schizophrenia- related proteins dictate the production of neurons in the developing brain. Her interest in developmental brain diseases was further piqued during her postdoctoral training with Dr. Marc Tessier-Lavigne at Genentech and Dr. Matthew Scott at Stanford University. She discovered a new regulator of the Hedgehog pathway in cerebellar development, which may make the traditional treatment for pediatric brain tumor obsolete.

Xuecai joined UC Merced in January 2017. She is interested in exploring how primary cilia integrate cell signaling in the developing brain and how the signaling errors are translated into developmental disorders. In her spare time, she enjoys handcrafting with her daughter.

Xiaoliang Liu, PhD
postdoctoral fellow
Email: xliu49@ucmerced.edu
Xiaoliang received his PhD in neural development in Kunming Institute of Zoology, Chinese Academy of Sciences. He is interested in deciphering signaling pathways that regulate radial glia biology in the developing brain.

Jingyi Zhang
graduate student
Email: jzhang244@ucmerced.edu

Jingyi is interested in exploring the fundamental mechanism of the Hedgehog signal transduction in the developing brain and in pediatric brain tumor.

Eva Cai
graduate student
Email: ecai@ucmerced.edu

Eva is interested in deciphering the signaling transduction mechanisms  stemming from the primary cilium, and how the cell signaling regulates brain formation.

Oscar Torres Gutierrez
graduate student
Email: otorresgutierrez@ucmerced.edu

Oscar is fascinated by the primary cilia in neural progenitors in the developing cortex and how defects in cilium function lead to brain developmental disorders.

Gurleen Kaur
Undergraduate student
Email: gkaur50@ucmerced.edu

Baldemar Motomochi Cedillo
Undergraduate student
Email: bmotomochicedillo@ucmerced.edu

Maximiliano Gonzalez Barba
Undergraduate student
Email: mgonzalezbarba@ucmerced.edu

Alumni

Falvio De La Torre
Undergraduate student (2021-2022)
Email: fdelatorre@ucmerced.edu

Alexandria Wallen
Undergraduate student (2021-2022)
Email: awallen2@ucmerced.edu
Current position: America University of the Caribbean School of Medicine

Hualing Peng
visiting graduate student (2018-2020)
Email: hpeng5@ucmerced.edu

Michelle Perez-Arreola
undergraduate student (2018-2019)
Email: mperez-arreola@ucmerced.edu

Jesse Francisco-Ambrosio
Undergraduate student (2019-2020)
Email: jfrancisco-ambrosi@ucmerced.edu

Amanda Ya
Undergraduate student (2017-2019)
Email: aya2@ucmerced.edu
Current position: Graduate student, Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH

Aaron Lin
Undergraduate student (2018-2019)
Email: alin65@ucmerced.edu
Current position: Undergraduate student, UCLA

Whitney Williams
Undergraduate student (2018-2019)
wwilliams3@ucmerced.edu

Dora Mendez
Undergraduate student (2018-2019)
dmendez23@ucmerced.edu

Alexander Del Bosque
Undergraduate student (2017-2018)
adelbosque@ucmerced.edu

Winston Ma
Undergraduate student (2017-2018)
Wma6@ucmerced.edu

Paul Chavez
Undergraduate student (2017-2018)
Pchavez5@ucmerced.edu