Xiaolei Su, PhD

Dr. Xiaolei Su received initial scientific training at Peking University as an undergraduate. He obtained a Ph.D. degree at Harvard, where he investigated cytoskeleton dynamics under the mentorship of David Pellman. He joined Ron Vale's Lab at UCSF as a postdoc fellow and revealed that phase separation of membrane-associated proteins promotes T cell activation. Dr. Su started his own group at Yale in 2018. His current research focuses on membrane remodeling and membrane receptor signaling during immune responses. Dr. Su's team combined biochemical reconstitution with live cell imaging and animal model to understand how biomolecular condensation regulates immune signaling. They also investigated the molecular pathways underlying CAR T activation and designed CARs with new signaling functions to target blood, skin, and lung cancers.