Aaron Kuan is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Neuroscience at the Yale School of Medicine, and a Wu Tsai Institute Investigator. His lab, which opened in fall 2023, aims to apply circuit-mapping techniques at brain-wide scales to understand how brain wiring underlies cognition and neurological diseases. As a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard Medical School with co-mentors Prof. Wei-Chung Lee and Prof. Christopher Harvey, Aaron developed new electron microscopy and X-ray imaging techniques that make it possible to map neural circuits at unprecedented detail and scale, and leveraged these techniques to investigate how decision-making is implemented in the brain. His research program now aims to extend these techniques to study brain-wide circuits involving multiple brain regions.
Aaron recieved his PhD in applied physics from the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences. His thesis research characterized nanopores in suspended graphene membranes, which have promising applications in single molecule DNA sequencing and water filtration.
In addition to his research, Aaron is also a violinist and conductor, having studied at New England Conservatory and the The Juilliard School, and served as the Music Director of the Dudley House Orchestra at Harvard University for several years.