P.D. Soros Fellowship for New Americans

Cynthia 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 family moved to California soon after she was born. In high school she was recognized by the U.S. Department of Education as one of 141 Presidential Scholars for 2006.

As a sophomore at Stanford, Cynthia began working in a neonatology lab studying potential therapies for neonatal jaundice. The work led to the Firestone Medal, Stanford's highest honor for undergraduate research, as well as to first authorship of a paper published in the journal Pediatric Research. She graduated in 2010 in Biology with honors in Neurobiology and a minor in Music.

Cynthia is also a talented pianist. She was a soloist with the Stanford Symphony Orchestra and was awarded one of Stanford's major prizes for piano performance.

Following a post-baccalaureate year of continued research, Cynthia entered the Medical Scientist Training Program at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA to pursue an M.D. and a Ph.D in Neuroscience. For her thesis research in the laboratory of Carlos Portera-Cailliau, Cynthia used in vivo two-photon microscopy to study how cortical networks and sensory processing mechanisms develop aberrantly in Fragile X Syndrome. This research led to a first-author publication in the Journal of Neuroscience in 2017. After graduating from medical school in 2019, Cynthia plans to pursue residency training in Psychiatry. She intends on a career combining clinical work in Child and Adolescent Psychiatry with neuroscience research to improve early diagnosis and intervention in neuropsychiatric disease.