Affiliation: The University Clinic for Anesthesiology and Pain Therapy; University of Bern, Department for BioMedical Research

Dr. Melody Ying-Yu Huang received her BS in Biochemical Science and Technology (formerly Agricultural Chemistry) from the National Taiwan University in 1999. She obtained her MS in Biotechnology from the University of Pennsylvania in 2002, working in the cancer genetics lab of Michael Pack, where she used forward genetics approaches and conducted genetic mapping of the zebrafish slim jim (slj) mutants. She earned her PhD in biology from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) in 2007, where she worked in the vision research lab of Stephan Neuhauss. During her thesis work, she applied genetic and behavioral visual function analyses to the early development of the zebrafish nervous system. She discovered that zebrafish belladonna (bel) mutants, which first drew attention owing to retinotectal misprojections and reversed optokinetic response, exhibit peculiar spontaneous eye oscillations that closely resemble a rare human congenital ocular motor disorder: infantile nystagmus syndrome (INS).

During her postdoctoral training and later as an independent PI, she moved to the Neurology Clinic at the University Hospital Zurich, which hosted her to establish the zebrafish INS model for bench-to-bedside translational research. Nystagmus research, being essentially in a deadlock due to the unavailability of a suitable animal model, has been greatly leveraged through her critical discovery of the zebrafish INS model. Exploiting this model, she and her team conducted many research projects that garnered attention from the international scientific community in the field of research. Since 2019, Dr. Huang has been the head of the lab and group leader at the University Clinic for Anesthesiology and Pain Therapy and the Department for BioMedical Research of the University of Bern.