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.
Meet our Team
Holiday 2022
Lab Members:
- Maricruz Alvarado, researcher & lab boss
- Biswadeep Khan, postdoctoral fellow Pius Park, postdoctoral fellow
- Chung-ha Davis, postdoctoral fellow Vinicius Miessler de Andrade Carvalho, postdoctoral fellow
- Lily Duong, admin. associate Sakura Tanaka, postdoctoral fellow
- Leonardi Gozali, graduate student YiChao Wei, postdoctoral fellow
- Lingyi Zhang, graduate student Taehong Yang, postdoctoral fellow
The Lab Decider
- Alumni
- Sama Ahmed, graduate student Eleanor Fraser, graduate student Erik Sudin, research specialist
- Neha Agarwal, undergraduate student Catherine Garrison, graduate student Stella Tan, undergraduate student
- Crista Barberini, software guru Scott Juntti, graduate student Adarsh Trantry, lab tech + RA (Faculty: U Maryland, College Park)
- Daniel Bayless, postdoctoral fellow Joe Knoedler, postdoctoral fellow Jessica Tolkuhn, postdoctoral fellow (Faculty: Salk) (Faculty: CSHL)
- Max Borius, research specialist Sara Kwong, undergraduate student Amy Wang, undergraduate student
- Nicole Leung, postdoctoral fellow Sayaka Inoue, postdoctoral fellow Grace Wang, undergraduate student (Faculty: WashU)
- Allen Cai, undergraduate student Dan Landayan, postdoctoral fellow Jessica Wu, undergraduate student
- Ali Malik, graduate student Liz Unger, graduate student Melody Wu, graduate student
- Catriona Carey, lab boss Vidya Mandiyan, lab boss Cindy Yang, graudate student
- Michael Chiang, research specialist Dev Manoli, clinical and postdoctoral fellow Xiaohong Xu, postdoctoral fellow (Faculty: UCSF) (Faculty: ION, Shanghai)
- Delara Chizari, research specialist Gabe McKinsey, postdoctoral fellow
- Jennifer Coats, graduate student Julius Oatts, undergraduate student
- Laura Crothers, lab boss Srini Parthasarathy, postdoctoral fellow
- Karen Dai Jessica Porter, postdoctoral fellow
- Byron Fan, undergraduate student Taylor Soderborg, undergraduate student
- Pu Fan, graduate student Mengjung Sheng, postdoctoral fellow (Faculty: Peking Union Medical College)