Jia Liu

Jia Liu is a Research Associate Professor in the Neuroscience Initiative at the Advanced Science Research Center (ASRC) of The City University of New York (CUNY). She serves as Director of the Epigenetics Facility and the Rodent Behavioral Analysis Suite. Her research focuses on the interplay between environmental factors (e.g., stress, diet, air pollutants) and glial cells, particularly oligodendrocytes and myelination, in psychiatric disorders. She received her Ph.D. in Neuroscience from Wesleyan University and completed postdoctoral training at Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, where she studied epigenetic mechanisms in myelination and oligodendrocyte development. Her work bridges molecular neuroscience, epigenetics, and behavioral models to understand stress-related mental health outcomes. She has pioneered studies demonstrating the role of oligodendrocyte dysfunction in depression and anxiety, challenging traditional neuron-centric models of mental illness.

Research Interests: Her lab investigates how environmental stressors impact glial cells and epigenetic regulation to influence mental health. Key areas include myelin dynamics in psychiatric disorders, epigenetic mechanisms governing oligodendrocyte function, and novel strategies to enhance stress resilience through glial modulation. Recent work has identified histone methyltransferases and microglial lipid pathways as critical players in stress-induced neurodegeneration and behavioral deficits.

Lab Facilities: As facility director, she oversees advanced epigenetic analysis (e.g., ChIP-seq, RNA-seq) and behavioral phenotyping (e.g., anxiety/depression assays, optogenetic tools). The Epigenetics Facility supports single-cell genomics and flow cytometry, while the Rodent Behavioral Analysis Suite enables comprehensive preclinical behavioral studies.

Future Work: Current projects explore air pollutant exposure’s effects on glial-epigenetic interactions in mental health, and translational approaches to target oligodendrocyte plasticity for treating stress-related disorders.