Dr. Alicia Che

Assistant Professor, Yale School of Medicine, Connecticut, USA
Postdoctoral Fellow, Weill Cornell Medicine, New York, USA
PhD, University of Connecticut, USA

Dr. Alicia Che decided to leave her home of Chengdu, China to go to college abroad because she wasn’t exactly sure what she wanted to do. She knew she was good at school and liked science and math, but she wasn’t drawn towards any of the paths that those around her with similar interests were encouraged to pursue. But after her first exposure to neuroscience research as an undergraduate in the US, Alicia found a path that finally suited her. Now, an Assistant Professor of Psychiatry at the Yale University School of Medicine, Alicia studies how early-life experiences shape neural circuit assembly and function.

An opportunity to move abroad presented itself when Alicia was accepted to Pacific Lutheran University in Washington state with a full-ride scholarship. She didn’t know anything about the school or even what “Lutheran” meant, but the opportunity was too good to pass up, so she booked a one-way plane ticket to Washington. She pursued a broad STEM education – triple-majoring in biology, physical chemistry, and physics with a minor in math – and was broadly interested in research. From there, a more specific interest in neuroscience emerged as she started working with Dr. Matt Smith in the biology department, using immunohistochemistry to study gonadotropin-releasing hormone (GnRH) neurons and the expression of different peptides in the suprachiasmatic nucleus.  She wanted to pursue a PhD, and especially when her graduation coincided with the economic downturn of 2008, graduate school looked like the most logical and viable next step.

Alicia applied and was accepted to the neurobiology PhD program at the University of Connecticut, where her undergraduate advisor had also attended graduate school. She was directly admitted into the lab of Dr. Joe LoTurco, whose lab studies cortical circuit development and the roles of dyslexia-associated genes. The lab had recently developed knockout mice for each of three dyslexia-associated genes they had identified. Therefore, Alicia and two other new graduate students were each assigned a gene and the respective knockout mouse to explore for their PhD projects. 

Alicia was assigned the Dcdc2 gene, and for a while, she thought she had been dealt an unlucky hand. While another student found that their gene’s knockout resulted in a dramatic phenotype in which the mouse’s organs were often on the wrong side of the body, Alicia’s mice looked and behaved normally. Because of Dcdc2’s association with dyslexia, Alicia and her advisor hypothesized that perhaps there could be a more subtle phenotype, such as a change in how efficiently the cortex processes information, that could relate to some of the challenges associated with dyslexia. To test for such a phenotype, Alicia became an expert electrophysiologist. She used patch clamp electrophysiology to determine how reliably cortical neurons in brain slices fired in response to current injection in Dcdc2 KO versus WT mice. Indeed, there was a deficit in the Dcdc2 KO mice, and Alicia went on to show that this change in spike timing was mediated by increased activation of presynaptic NMDA receptors. As a side project, Alicia also dabbled in in vivo two-photon imaging in young, postnatal mice – a method for recording neuronal activity in awake animals while they are still growing and maturing. Although this didn’t quite pan out at the time, it did foreshadow some of the research that Alicia would pursue in her burgeoning career.

Still keenly interested in cortical microcircuitry, Alicia went on to conduct postdoctoral research in the brand new lab of Dr. Natalia De Marco Garcia at the Weill Cornell School of Medicine with co-advising from Dr. Gord Fishell at the NYU School of Medicine. In many ways, this was an ideal situation, as Alicia got to simultaneously experience the distinct advantages of new and more established labs and mentors. Scientifically, this also proved fruitful. After further honing her expertise in two-photon imaging in very young (one week old) mice, she began an exploratory project to characterize the postnatal activity patterns of different cortical inhibitory interneuron subtypes. In one particular experiment in which Alicia was recording activity from a specific subpopulation of the most superficial (layer 1, ‘L1’) interneurons in the cortex, Alicia observed something intriguing. At first, the brain looked dark, and she thought the fluorescent calcium indicator GCaMP, which causes neurons to light up when active, wasn’t working. But then, she saw a huge flash of activity – a striking display of synchronized activation across all of these L1 interneurons that distinguished them from any other cell type she had looked at thus far. She went on to show that this synchronized activity is driven by strong but short-lived thalamic input that goes away after the first postnatal week, leading to desynchronization that enables the proper organization of cortical circuitry for later sensory processing.

In other ways, Alicia’s postdoctoral situation was less ideal, or at least more challenging. Because she still lived in Connecticut with her husband who was doing his own postdoc at Yale, Alicia had to commute into New York City every day, which took two hours each way. This became even more challenging when, a few years into her postdoc, Alicia became pregnant with their first child. Faced with the logistical and financial challenges of balancing her postdoc with starting a family, Alicia strongly considered leaving her postdoc and pursuing other career paths. The students in the De Marco Garcia lab, with whom she’d grown very close, convinced her to stay at least long enough to see her paper through, and they volunteered to step up to help her make it work however they could. She was also comforted to find that when she put in some applications for non-academic jobs, she quickly received multiple positive responses – demonstrating that there were other viable paths for her to take. In the end, she decided that she would stick it out to finish her paper and try to pursue a faculty position, with the assurance that she could have other great job prospects outside of academia. Although things were still very challenging, especially when she had a second kid just a little over a year after her first, she made it work with the help and support of students, mentors, and family. Things fell into place in the last few years as Alicia published her papers, was awarded a ‘Pathway to Independence’ K99/R00 award from the NIH, and ultimately secured a faculty position at the Yale School of Medicine.

Now, as the PI of her own lab, Alicia continues to study the development and function of cortical circuits, particularly in the context of behavior and neuropsychiatric disorders. One line of research explores the role of oxytocin and social context in the sensory processing of touch during early life. Her lab has observed that the mere presence of a young pup’s mother changes how the pup’s brain processes touch, in line with similar observations made in humans. Her lab also has projects looking at the lifelong circuit consequences of early cannabinoid exposure and at adult plasticity of interneurons that are associated with neuropsychiatric conditions. In addition to pursuing these exciting scientific questions, Alicia’s other favorite part of her job is mentoring. She loves interacting with new students and trainees, both as a PI and as the Director of Admissions for Yale’s neuroscience PhD program, and learning about the unique ways each person works and learns. Although she may not have always known what the future had in store for her, it certainly seems that Alicia’s chosen path brought her to where she was always meant to be.

Find out more about Alicia and her lab’s research here.
Listen to Megan’s full interview with Alicia on July 25, 2025 below!