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

Lab meeting via Zoom

Current lab members:

  • Maricruz Alvarado, research assistant & lab boss                                                                                   
  • Daniel Bayless, postdoctoral fellow                                                                                                                           Joe Knoedler, postdoctoral fellow
  • Chung-ha Davis, graduate student (Neuroscience)                                                                                             Vinicius Miessler de Andrade Carvalho, postdoctoral fellow
  • Lily Duong, admin. associate                                                                                                                                         Sakura Tanaka, postdoctoral fellow
  • Leonardi Gozali, graduate student                                                                                                                             YiChao Wei, postdoctoral fellow
  • Sayaka Inoue, postdoctoral fellow                                                                                                                              Renzhi Yang, postdoctoral fellow
  • Dan Landayan, postdoctoral fellow                                                                                                                            Taehong Yang, postdoctoral fellow 
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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)                                             
  • Max Borius, research specialist                               Sara Kwong, undergraduate student                                      Jessica Tollkuhn, postdoctoral  fellow                                                                                                                                                                                                                 (Faculty: CSHL)
  • Allen Cai, undergraduate student                          Ali Malik                                                                                                Liz Unger, graduate student    
  • Catriona Carey, lab boss                                            Vidya Mandiyan, lab boss                                                              Amy Wang, undergraduate student 
  • Michael Chiang, research specialist                     Dev Manoli, clinical and postdoctoral fellow                        Grace Wang, undergraduate student                                                                   (Faculty: UCSF)                       
  • Delara Chizari, research specialist                        Gabe McKinsey, postdoctoral fellow                                        Jessica Wu, undergraduate student
  • Jennifer Coats, graduate student                          Julius Oatts, undergraduate student                                       Melody Wu, graduate student           
  • Laura Crothers, lab boss                                            Srini Parthasarathy, postdoctoral fellow                                Cindy Yang, graduate student
  • Karen Dai                                                                          Jessica Porter, postdoctoral fellow                                           Xiaohong Xu, postdoctoral fellow                                                                                                                                                                                                                                    (Faculty: ION, Shanghai)
  • Byron Fan, undergraduate student                       Taylor Soderborg, undergraduate student
  • Pu Fan, graduate student                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                          (Faculty: Peking Union Medical College)