Rate My Professor Junyue Cao

Junyue Cao, Ph.D., is the Fisher Center Foundation Associate Professor and head of the Laboratory of Single-Cell Genomics and Population Dynamics at The Rockefeller University. He joined the faculty in 2020. Cao develops and applies scalable single-cell genomic techniques to investigate how cell populations maintain homeostasis in mammalian tissues and how these processes are disrupted during aging and in aging-related disorders such as Alzheimer’s disease and cancer. His laboratory has created tools including EasySci for profiling gene expression and chromatin accessibility from millions of single cells, TrackerSci for tracking progenitor cell dynamics in vivo, and PerturbSci-Kinetics for high-throughput CRISPR-based perturbation of transcriptional dynamics. These approaches have provided insights into gene regulation, cell-type-specific changes, and molecular programs associated with aging and disease in human and mouse models.

Cao received a B.S. in Biological Science from Peking University in 2010 and a Ph.D. in Molecular and Cellular Biology from the University of Washington in 2019. He is a faculty member in the David Rockefeller Graduate Program, the Tri-Institutional M.D.-Ph.D. Program, and the Tri-Institutional Ph.D. Program in Computational Biology and Medicine. Cao has co-authored publications appearing in Nature, Science, Cell, and other leading journals. He has received numerous honors, including the Verna Chapman Young Scientist Award in 2018, the Science & SciLifeLab Prize for Young Scientists in 2020, the NIH Director’s New Innovator Award in 2021, and the Hevolution/AFAR New Investigator Award in 2025. His work focuses on advancing understanding of cellular dynamics to support potential strategies for restoring tissue homeostasis in aging and disease.