About Nirao Shah

Nirao Shah is a Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences and of Neurobiology at Stanford University. After completing his medical training, Nirao was a graduate student at Caltech, where he identified mechanisms that control differentiation of neural stem cells. For his post-graduate fellowship at Columbia University, Nirao developed genetic approaches to identify neural pathways that regulate sex differences in social behaviors. Nirao started his faculty position as Assistant Professor at UC San Francisco in 2004, received tenure in 2010, and was promoted to Professor in 2014. He moved to his current position at Stanford in Fall 2016.

In his own laboratory, Nirao’s research has discovered mechanisms whereby nature and nurture control social behaviors in males and females. Nirao’s findings have provided insights into how our brains generate social interactions in health, and they are relevant to understanding mechanisms underlying behavioral manifestations of autism, dementia, mood disorders, and PTSD. His work has been supported by funding from the Jane Coffin Childs Memorial Fund, Burroughs Wellcome Fund, Ellison Medical Foundation, Mallinckrodt Jr. Foundation, McKnight Foundation for Neuroscience, NARSAD, NIH (including a Director’s Pioneer award, Sloan Foundation, and more recently by seed grants from the Stanford Neurosciences Institute and WSDM at Stanford.

For more information, please visit Dr. Shah's CAP profile

Meet our Team

Holiday 2022

Lab Members:

  • Maricruz Alvarado, researcher & lab boss
  • Vinicius Miessler de Andrade Carvalho, postdoctoral fellow
  • Lele Cui, postdoctoral fellow 
  • Lily Duong, admin    
  • Leonardi Gozali, graduate student
  • Biswadeep Khan, postdoctoral fellow      
  • Ai Miyasaka, postdoctoral fellow      
  • Sakura Tanaka, postdoctoral fellow                                                    
  • YiChao Wei, postdoctoral fellow
  • Renzhi Yang,  postdoctoral fellow                                                        
  • Taehong Yang, postdoctoral fellow
  • Lingyi Zhang, graduate student 
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The Lab Decider 

  • Alumni
  • Sama Ahmed, graduate student            
  • Neha Agarwal, undergraduate student
  • Crista Barberini, software guru   
  • Daniel Bayless, postdoctoral fellow (Faculty: Salk) 
  • Max Borius, research specialist    
  • Allen Cai, undergraduate student      
  • Catriona Carey, lab boss         
  • Michael Chiang, research specialist                                                 
  • Delara Chizari, research specialist     
  • Jennifer Coats, graduate student    
  • Laura Crothers, lab boss                
  • Karen Dai                
  • Byron Fan, undergraduate student   
  • Pu Fan, graduate student (Faculty: Peking Union Medical College)                       
  • Eleanor Fraser, graduate student  
  • Catherine Garrison, graduate student         
  • Sayaka Inoue, postdoctoral fellow (Faculty: WashU)                                    
  • Scott Juntti, graduate student (Faculty: U Maryland, College Park)                                                                                                                   
  • Joe Knoedler, postdoctoral fellow    
  • Sara Kwong, undergraduate student                                    
  • Dan Landayan, postdoctoral fellow     
  • Nicole Leung, postdoctoral fellow                              
  • Ali Malik, graduate student                                                                                               
  • Vidya Mandiyan, lab boss                                                                                               
  • Dev Manoli, postdoctoral fellow  (Faculty: UCSF)                               
  • Gabe McKinsey, postdoctoral fellow                                                                           
  • Julius Oatts, undergraduate student                                                                 
  • Srini Parthasarathy, postdoctoral fellow                                        
  • Jessica Porter, postdoctoral fellow                                                                   
  • Mengjung Sheng, postdoctoral fellow                           
  • Taylor Soderborg, undergraduate student
  • Erik Sudin, research specialist
  • Liz Unger, graduate student
  • Stella Tan, undergraduate student                                    
  • Jessica Tolkuhn, postdoctoral fellow (Faculty: CSHL)
  • Adarsh Trantry, lab tech + RA        
  • Amy Wang, undergraduate student     
  • Grace Wang, undergraduate student  
  • Jessica Wu, undergraduate student
  • Melody Wu, graduate student  
  • Xiaohong Xu, postdoctoral fellow (Faculty: ION, Shanghai)
  • Cindy Yang, graudate student
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