People

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Julie Semmelhack

Julie did her undergraduate training at Princeton, and got her PhD from UCSD, working on the Drosophila olfactory system in Jing Wang’s lab. She began working on the zebrafish visual system as a postdoc with Herwig Baier, first at UCSF and then Max Planck Institute for Neurobiology in Martinsried, Germany. She started her lab at HKUST in early 2017.

Richard G. Tian

Richard obtained his bachelor’s degree in biochemistry from HKUST. He did his thesis research in Prof. King Chow’s lab, working on synthetic gene circuits in cultured mammalian cells. After graduation, he moved to Vienna and studied the neural control of Drosophila mating behaviour at the Research Institute of Molecular Pathology (IMP). He is a passionate traveller, a coffee addict and a gym rat.

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Frederick Peixiong Zhao

Fred graduated with a bachelor’s degree  in Human Neuroscience and Cognitive Science from University of Toronto. He then moved to the United States and studied in Marco Gallio’s lab at Northwestern University as a Neurobiology masters student. His masters thesis addressed how attractive sweet taste and aversive hot temperature influence feeding behavior in Drosophila. His research interest is in how conflicting sensory information is resolved in the nervous system and how does the resolution leads to decision-making. He joined the lab in 2020 as a Ph.D. student studying visual attention in zebrafish. He’s a self-proclaimed good home cook and a chronic cat addict.

Yuxin Tong

Yuxin obtained her bachelor’s degree in mathematics from East China University of Science and Technology. With a passion in system neuroscience, she joined Julie’s lab as a PhD student in September 2020. Her research interests focus on the brain internal states and visuomotor transformation underlying target-directed behavior. In addition to research, she enjoys strength training and rock climbing.

Kenny K. L. SZETO

Kenny obtained his bachelor’s degree in biochemistry and cell biology from The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. He did his thesis research in Prof. Ting XIE’s lab, studying stem cell-niche interactions. Hoping to know more about the brain, Kenny joined Julie’s lab as an MPhil student in 2024. He is a music, tea, and book lover.

 

Kai Fu

Kai obtained his bachelor’s degree in biotechnology from Northwest A&F University. He did his thesis research on brain-inspired robust convolutional neural networks. His research interests mainly focusing on building bridges between primate brain and artificial neural networks. Kai joined Semmelhack Lab in September 2024. He loves watching movies, playing volleyball and FPS games.

A young man wearing a dark t-shirt and shorts stands by the water at night, with a city skyline illuminated in the background.

Kenny K. Y. Chen

Kenny is an undergraduate student majoring in computer science. He joined Julie’s lab doing research on multidisciplinary endeavour in neuroscience. His research interest lies in studying neural circuits in view of closed sensorimotor loop. He is a speedcuber and Unix devotee.

Alumni

Lola Lam: former RA, now PhD student at Bordeaux Neurocampus.

Amanda Huang: former RA, now PhD student at CUHK.

Shanqian Ma: former RA, now Masters Student at Eberhard Karls University, Tübingen.

Yang Li (DT): former Masters Student, now PhD student at Stanford University.

Jessie Yu: former RA, now PhD Student at University of Windsor, Ontario.

John Bear: former PhD student.

Jane Yam: former RA.

Ivan Alex P. Lazarte: former RA.

Biswadeep Khan: former PhD student and Postdoc, now Postdoc at Stanford University.