P.D. Soros Fellowship for New Americans

Cynthia He was born in Shanghai, China. Her parents and grandparents had been sent to rural farms for re-education during the Cultural Revolution. She and her parents moved to California soon after she was born. 

As an undergraduate at Stanford University, Cynthia worked in the neonatology lab of David Stevenson, studying potential therapies for neonatal jaundice. She graduated in 2010 in Biological Sciences with honors in Neurobiology. Cynthia has been a pianist since a young age and also completed a minor in Music during college. She then completed her M.D. and Ph.D in Neuroscience in the Medical Scientist Training Program at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA. For her dissertation research in the laboratory of Carlos Portera-Cailliau, Cynthia studied how cortical networks and sensory processing mechanisms develop aberrantly in Fragile X Syndrome (the most common inherited form of autism). As a medical student, Cynthia served in multiple leadership roles on the Medical Student Council and Medical Education Committee.

After graduating from medical school in 2019, Cynthia completed her residency training in Psychiatry at UCSF in 2023, and she obtained specialized training in women’s mental health and psychodynamic psychotherapy. She served as President of the Psychiatry Residents Association and Chief Resident at the San Francisco Veterans Affairs Medical Center. She then pursued fellowship training in Forensic Psychiatry at UCSF. Since 2021, Cynthia has been active in the Northern California Psychiatric Society, where she is currently a Councilor and a member of the Professional Education, Ethics, and Asian-American Issues Committees. Her writing on the impact of culture and identity in psychiatric practice has been published in JAMA, Doximity, and Psychoanalytic Dialogues. Her recent scholarly work focuses on areas of ethical tension and evolving standards in psychiatric care.