Kun Yang, PhD

Highlights

Languages

English

Gender

Female

Johns Hopkins Affiliations:

Johns Hopkins School of Medicine Faculty

About Kun Yang

Primary Academic Title

Assistant Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences

Background

Dr. Yang is a computational biologist with expertise in statistical analysis and next-generation sequencing data analysis. She received her bachelor's and Ph.D. degrees from Peking University, China. She subsequently completed postdoctoral fellowships at the University of Pennsylvania and Johns Hopkins University. She was appointed as an Assistant Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine in 2020.

Dr. Yang's research focuses on investigating the molecular mechanisms of the pathological progression and clinical features of psychotic disorders at an early stage using biopsied neuronal cells from living subjects. She is also devoted to applying computational methods to integrate multi-modal data to identify biomarkers and drug targets for early diagnosis and reversing the disease course at the early stage, respectively.

In addition to her active research activity and collaborations at Hopkins, as a data scientist, Dr. Yang also pays attention to diversity, data harmonization, and statistical power issues, which may be addressed through multi-institutional collaborations. She is leading consortium projects with the Enhancing Neuro Imaging Genetics through Meta-Analysis (ENIGMA) consortium to study the structural biomarkers for treatment-resistant antipsychotics and with the Psychiatric Genomics Consortium (PGC) to identify potential drug targets for early-stage psychosis. She also serves as the data analysis leader, data manager, and coordinator for several projects with teams from the US, Canada, UK, Norway, Belgium, Venezuela, China, Japan, South Korea, and Singapore.

Research Interests

computational methods for multimodal data integration, early diagnosis and prevention of mental illness, molecular mechanism and brain functional changes of treatment resistant psychosis and relapse

Google Scholar

https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=ZVKWcokAAAAJ&hl=en

Selected Publications

Yang K, Hasegawa Y, Bhattarai JP, Hua J, Dower M, Etyemez S, Prasad N, Duvall L, Paez A, Smith A, Wang Y, Zhang YF, Lane AP, Ishizuka K, Kamath V, Ma M, Kamiya A, Sawa A. Inflammation-related pathology in the olfactory epithelium: its impact on the olfactory system in psychotic disorders. Mol Psychiatry. 2024; 29(5):1453-1464.
Mihaljevic M, Chang Y, Witmer A, Coughlin JM, Schretlen D, Barker P, *Yang K, Sawa A. Reduction of N-acetyl aspartate (NAA) in association with relapse in early-stage psychosis: a 7- Tesla MRS study. *Schizophrenia. 2024; 10:29. *co-corresponding author
Wang M, Barker PB, Cascella NG, Coughlin JM, Nestadt G, Nucifora FC Jr, Sedlak TW, Kelly A, Younes L, Geman D, Palaniyappan L, Sawa A, Yang K. Longitudinal changes in brain metabolites in healthy controls and patients with first episode psychosis: a 7-tesla mrs study. Mol Psychiatry. 2023; 28:2018-2029.
Yang K, Ayala-Grosso C, Bhattarai JP, Sheriff A, Takahashi T, Cristino A S, Zelano C, Ma M: Unraveling the Link between Olfactory Deficits and Neuropsychiatric Disorders. *J Neurosci 2023; 43:7501-7510. *co-corresponding author
Yang K, Longo L, Narita Z, Cascella N, Nucifora FC Jr, Coughlin JM, Nestadt G, Sedlak TW, Mihaljevic M, Wang M, Kenkare A, Nagpal A, Sethi M, Kelly A, Di Carlo P, Kamath V, Faria A, Barker P, Sawa A. A multimodal study of a first episode psychosis cohort: potential markers of antipsychotic treatment resistance. Mol Psychiatry. 2022; 27:1184-1191.