Dr. X. William Yang obtained combined B.S./M.S. degrees from the Department of Molecular Biophysics & Biochemistry at Yale University in 1991. He then completed M.D./Ph.D. training at Rockefeller University (Ph.D., 1998) and Weill Medical College of Cornell University (M.D., 2000). He co-invented with Nathaniel Heintz a powerful mouse genetic technology to engineer Bacterial Artificial Chromosomes (BACs) and generate BAC transgenic mice. Dr. Yang’s laboratory, established at UCLA in 2002, has made significant contributions to the development of novel human genomic BAC transgenic mouse models for human neurodegenerative disorders including Huntington’s disease (HD), Parkinson’s disease and Alzheimer’s disease, and the use of such models to dissect disease mechanisms and identify therapeutic targets. The BACHD model developed by Dr. Yang’s lab has been extensively used by the academia and industry for preclinical testing of candidate therapeutics. It has enabled the advancement of several innovative HD therapeutics into clinical trials. The Yang lab has also applied novel systems biology approaches to study brain gene expression, and to decipher in vivo transcriptomic and proteomic networks for HD. The Yang lab studies the role of basal ganglia circuitry in the generation of normal and pathological behaviors. Recently, the Yang lab invented a new mouse genetic tool (called MORF mice) for brainwide genetic sparse labeling of thousands of neurons and glial cells to illuminate their exquisite morphology. Dr. Yang is a recipient of two BRAIN Initiative Awards from the National Institutes of Health, the Brain Disorders Award from the McKnight Endowment Fund for Neuroscience, the Leslie Gehry Brenner Prize for Innovation in Science from the Hereditary Disease Foundation. He is an elected member of the American Society for Clinical Investigation.