Neuroscientist Xin Jin, PhD, has been awarded the prestigious 2022 Rising Star Award from One Mind, a leading brain health nonprofit organization based in Rutherford, Calif. The awardees were selected through a competitive review administered by One Mind’s scientific advisory board, which includes ten leading scientists and clinicians. The award of $300,000 funds pivotal and innovative research on the origins and treatment of mental health conditions, supporting promising emerging leaders in the field of neuropsychiatry.

Jin’s research advances the understanding of how diverse genetic risk factors can manifest in brain disorders and diseases. Using a novel and scalable genetic screening technology, she aims to comprehensively analyze gene sets associated with neuropsychiatric disorders and discover, with single-cell resolution, which brain regions and cell types are involved in disease pathology. In creating a high-throughput screening platform that can be applied to brain tissues, Jin hopes to uncover new disease-relevant biology that may be overlooked using existing methodologies.

In addition to the Rising Star Award, Jin was named one of MIT Technology Review’s 35 Innovators Under 35 in 2022, and recently received the Baxter Young Investigator Award, the Larry L. Hillblom Foundation Award, and the Klingenstein-Simons Fellowship Award in Neuroscience. She has also garnered the Early Career Investigator Award from the International Society for Autism Research (INSAR); a Simons Foundation Collaborative Grant; a Young Investigator Award from the Brain and Behavior Research Foundation; and an Allison Doupe Fellowship from the McKnight Foundation, among other awards and honors.

The Rising Star Awards were launched in 2005 under the idea that cutting-edge, high-risk research will accelerate breakthrough cures for those with neuropsychiatric illnesses. The grants are given to three scientists each year, who are additionally invited to a weekend-long scientific symposium and music festival to raise awareness for mental health.

Read more on the One Mind Rising Star Awards.