Xin Jin receives Early Career Investigator Award from International Society for Autism Research
The award is granted for the highest quality empirical research in the field of autism published in the past year.
April 28, 2022
LA JOLLA, CA— Scripps Research neuroscientist Xin Jin, PhD, has been named the recipient of the 2022 Early Career Investigator Award from the International Society for Autism Research (INSAR).
The annual award is granted to those investigators considered to have the best empirical research papers either published or in press during the past year. The award recognizes the contributions of independent scientists who are pursuing innovative research expected to ultimately improve the lives of those diagnosed with autism.
The published work that garnered the award was entitled “In vivo Perturb-Seq reveals neuronal and glial abnormalities associated with autism risk genes,” appearing in the November 2020 issue of Science. In this research, Jin used a gene-editing system to discover new potential functions across a set of autism-related genes in neurons and their supporting glial cells.
“I am very honored that our work is recognized by the International Society for Autism Research,” says Jin. “It is even more exciting to think that this is not the end point of the work, but rather just the beginning, as we develop and apply scalable genomic tools to unveil the diverse genetic landscape of this complex disorder.”
As an assistant professor in the Department of Neuroscience, Xin Jin’s lab is focused on the interaction of genetics and physiology in brain development. Jin has established sophisticated genetic engineering technology to identify at scale how certain autism risk genes can impact different brain cell types. The techniques are providing high-resolution insights of how various mutations impact brain development and related disorders.
Jin earned her doctorate in biology at The Rockefeller University. She then worked as a Junior Fellow at the Harvard Society of Fellows, before becoming a faculty member of Scripps Research in 2021.
Over the course of her studies, Jin has earned numerous awards and fellowships, including the Simons Foundation Collaborative Grant, a Young Investigator Award from the Brain and Behavior Research Foundation, an Allison Doupe Fellowship from the McKnight Foundation, an Intersections Science Fellow Award, a Presidential Member Award from the Genetics Society of America, and a Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) International predoctoral fellowship for graduate work.
The Early Career Investigator Award will be presented to Jin during the awards ceremony at the INSAR 2022 Annual Meeting, scheduled for May, 2022.
For more information, contact press@scripps.edu