Helen Yang, Ph.D.

  • Assistant Scientist, Vollum Institute

Biography

Helen Yang earned her B.A. in Molecular and Cellular Biology from Harvard University in 2011. She then moved to Stanford University and earned her Ph.D. in Neurosciences in Tom Clandinin's lab, where she studied computations in the fruit fly early visual system using novel genetically encoded voltage indicators. She then did her postdoctoral training in Rachel Wilson's lab at Harvard Medical School, where she studied what features of walking are under the brain's control and where she was a key member of the team building the BANC connectome, a synapse-level wiring diagram of the adult female fruit fly central nervous system. Yang joined the Vollum Institute as an assistant scientist in 2026.

Areas of interest

  • motor control
  • Drosophila
  • neural circuits

Publications

Selected publications

  • Bates AS*, Phelps JS*, Kim M*, Yang HH*, ... Murthy M, Drugowitsch J, Wilson RI, Lee WA. Distributed control circuits across a brain-and-cord connectome. Nature, 2026, 656: 957-970.
  • Pang MM, Chen F, Xie M, Druckmann S, Clandinin TR, and Yang HH. A recurrent neural circuit in Drosophila temporally sharpens visual inputs. Current Biology, 2025, 35(2): P333-346.E6.
  • Yang HH, Brezovec BE, Serratosa Capdevila L, Vanderbeck QX, Adachi A, Mann RS, and Wilson RI. Fine-grained descending control of steering in walking Drosophila. Cell, 2024, 187(22): 6290-6308.e27.
  • Isaacman-Beck J, Paik KC, Wienecke CFR, Yang HH, Fisher YE, Wang IE, Ishida IG, Maimon G, Wilson RI, and Clandinin TR. SPARC enables genetic manipulation of precise proportions of cells. Nat. Neurosci., 2020, 23: 1168-1175.
  • Yang HH and Clandinin TR. Elementary Motion Detection in Drosophila: Algorithms and Mechanisms. Annu. Rev. Vis. Sci., 2018, 4:143-163.
  • Chamberland S*, Yang HH*, Pan M, Evans SW, Chavarha M, Yang Y, Salesse C, Wu H, Wu JC, Clandinin TR, Toth K, Lin MZ, and St-Pierre F. Fast two-photon imaging of subcellular voltage dynamics in neuronal tissue with genetically encoded voltage indicators. eLife, 2017, 6:e25690, DOI: 10.7554/eLife.25690. 
  • Fisher YE*, Yang HH*, Issacman-Beck J, Xie M, Gohl DM, and Clandinin TR. FlpStop, a tool for conditional gene control in Drosophila. eLife, 2017, 6:e22279, DOI: 10.7554/eLife.22279.
  • Yang HH and St-Pierre F. Genetically encoded voltage indicators: opportunities and challenges. J. Neurosci., 2016, 36(39):9977-9989.
  • Yang HH*, St-Pierre F*, Sun X, Ding X, Lin MZ, and Clandinin TR. Subcellular imaging of voltage and calcium signals reveals neural processing in vivo. Cell, 2016, 166(1): 245-257.
  • Guenthner CJ, Miyamichi K, Yang HH, Heller HC, and Luo L. Permanent Genetic Access to Transiently Active Neurons Using Targeted Recombination in Active Populations (TRAP). Neuron, 2013, 75(5): 773-784.

Publications