Jenny Hsieh

Hsieh received her PhD from Johns Hopkins University, where she worked with Andrew Fire.^[2] In 2005, Hsieh completed a postdoctoral fellowship with Fred Gage at the Salk Institute.^[3]

Hsieh was a professor at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center from 2006 to 2018, when she moved to the University of Texas at San Antonio (UTSA).^[4] At UTSA, Hsieh holds the Semmes Foundation Chair in Cell Biology, and is the founding director of the UTSA Brain Health Consortium, a program to connect brain researchers across disciplines.^[5][6]

Hsieh's research focuses on the use of Induced pluripotent stem cells to create in vitro models of neurogenesis. She intends to use this to develop regenerative treatments for neurological disorders.^[2]

During the COVID-19 pandemic, Hsieh studied the potential for neural infection by SARS-CoV-2 using neural organoids.^[7] Her initial results, based on exposing neural organoids to the virus, suggested that infection of glia might be involved in neurological symptoms such as loss of taste or smell.^[7]