Dr. Y Kate Hong
Assistant Professor of Biological Sciences, Carnegie Mellon University & Carnegie Mellon Neuroscience Institute
Postdoctoral Fellow Columbia University
Postdoctoral Fellow Boston Children's Hospital
Ph.D. in Neuroscience Harvard University
Sc.B. in Biochemistry Brown University
Dr. Y Kate Hong is a natural problem solver, whose inherent curiosity has guided her throughout her career. Kate started as an electrical engineering major at Brown University, but quickly realized the strict requirements for the major were limiting her from exploring other topics. After switching her major to biochemistry, Kate was able to take courses like Russian Literature and Philosophy of Mind, which first laid the groundwork to Kate’s future in neuroscience. Kate’s inquisitiveness took her career through many levels of biological investigation; from cellular and molecular biology, cancer biology, developmental neuroscience, and now systems and increasingly computational neuroscience. As an Assistant Professor in Biological Science at Carnegie Mellon University, Kate is eager to answer questions about how sensory information guides behavior in both cortical and subcortical areas of the brain.
Even though Kate is now a certified jack-of-all-trades with the breadth of her training, she began her career as a self-described “staunch reductionist”, believing that everything could be explained by molecules and their interactions. After graduating from Brown with a biochemistry degree, Kate found herself unsure of what she wanted to do. Thinking that she wasn’t qualified to apply for positions outside of her local orbit on campus, Kate took a position as a research assistant (RA) in an Immunology Lab at Brown. In this role, she was excited to gain more lab experience and use the employee perk of free courses to figure out if she really wanted to pursue biochemistry and graduate school.
After one month into the job, her first review included feedback about her scientific promise, reassuring her that she was doing well. However, she learned that contrary to what she had been told by the PI and agreed upon, she wasn’t eligible to access the free courses for two years. Kate mustered up the courage to address the misunderstanding with the head of the lab, explaining that she wouldn’t have taken the position if she knew taking classes wasn’t an option. The next day, Kate was called into the office and fired on the spot. Kate pushed through the trauma of this sudden dismissal, and focused on finding a position at another institution. To her surprise, almost every lab she reached out to was interested in hiring her, and Kate began to see her value. “You don’t know what you're worth until you put yourself out there,” Kate explains. “As soon as I started actually applying for jobs widely, it became clear that the skills that I had were very much in high demand.”
Kate ended up taking a position in Dr. Tom Roberts’ lab at the Dana Farber Cancer Institute, which “completely changed [her] trajectory in science.” With mentors who fully supported her and believed in her, Kate flourished as a scientist with growing self-worth. Kate knew she wanted to go to graduate school, but was unsure of what field she wanted to go into. She enjoyed work on cancer biology, but the immense scope of cancer-causing cellular mutations dissuaded her from fully committing to that line of research. With a general interest in neuroscience, Kate applied to graduate school for neuroscience and a Fulbright Scholarship at the same time.
Kate was awarded the Fulbright, and spent a seminal year with Drs. Rüdiger Klein and Amparo Palmer at the Max Planck Institute of Neurobiology in Germany. There, she was formally introduced to neuroscience research and “fell in love with the research [she] was doing for the first time”. Kate was always interested in neuroscience on the surface level, but it wasn’t until she was in a neuroscience lab that she realized questions about the brain were the ones that she deeply wanted to answer. After a year of studying axon guidance and synaptic signaling during the Fulbright, she reapplied to graduate school for neuroscience knowing this was the area she was meant to be in. Kate earned a spot in the Neuroscience PhD program at Harvard University and joined Dr. Joshua Sanes’ lab. She researched retinal ganglion cells’ (RGCs) morphology, trying to understand how a single cell near the surface of the eye finds the right location to wire itself inside the brain. There are over 20 subtypes of RGCs defined by their dendritic fields, which in turn determine functional properties of their receptive field like direction selectivity. Kate wondered if RGC subtypes had distinct axonal morphology in their main target, the superior colliculus (SC). To tackle this she used single cell axon tracing and imaging. She discovered that RGCs with larger dendritic fields project to deeper layers of the SC, and that RGCs with similar functional properties, such as direction selectivity, project to similar depths of the SC. After her PhD, Kate found herself asking once cells are wired, how do they work? Kate had an extremely productive one year postdoc with Dr. Chinfei Chen at Boston Children’s Hospital where she used her expertise in axon tracing and imaging to study how synapses are remodeled over development in the visual thalamus. Having deeply studied structural remodeling of the brain, she was excited to probe further into the function of these connections; Kate joined Dr. Randy Bruno’s lab at Columbia University to learn in vivo electrophysiology and behavior in mice.
At Columbia, Kate studied how the brain processes touch information. She focused on the mouse whisker system and specifically the “barrel cortex” – a part of the somatosensory cortex that receives strong somatosensory input from the thalamus, with detailed information from individual whiskers. Mice use their whiskers similarly to how humans use their hands and fingers to extract fine details about objects and environments. This makes the whisker system an attractive model to study touch and information processing. In order to assay tactile skills in mice, Kate started with a basic sensory detection task – is something present or not? A physical bar either moved in or stayed out of the whiskers' reach. The mice then reported if an object was there or not by lifting a lever. Kate began investigating the role of the barrel cortex in this task, and started by precisely dissecting one cortical layer at a time, eventually also manipulating the area through optogenetics. To her astonishment, she found that mice were able to learn and perform this sensory detection task without the barrel cortex. “We thought that the cortex was absolutely necessary,” Kate explains. “But it looks like there are other ways that the brain can either compensate or substitute for the loss of cortex to perform these tasks–and do so extremely rapidly.” This finding inspired her current line of questions in her own lab at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU). “If it’s not the cortex,” Kate asks, “then what are the other areas that can mediate [this behavior]? And how does the brain know which pathway to use?” Kate is now diving deep into subcortical areas, figuring out how sensory information used in behavior is distributed across and flows throughout the brain.
In addition to her dedicated research plan, Kate is taking on the role of mentor with equal focus. Her formative experiences with positive mentors made her appreciate the importance and impact mentors have on a trainee’s development. Reflecting on those she admires, she sees that the successful and respected mentors are able to tailor their mentoring to each individual. Now, Kate sees that “each person has such personalities and different ways of learning and being motivated.” Even though this responsibility is new, Kate strives to “draw the best out of each individual” and have a unique training paradigm guided by what each person wants to do after their time in the Hong lab.
When interviewing at CMU, Kate was immediately grabbed by the vibrant neuroscience research community between CMU and the University of Pittsburgh, with whom they exchange resources and form productive collaborations. Now as a young-faculty member, Kate is excited to embark on collaborations, combining her own expertise with that of others, to push her research forward faster. In the multidisciplinary field of neuroscience “you have to find collaborators who are experts” Kate explains. “Coming to a collaborative place that excels across basic, computational and engineering sciences, has really opened new directions for our lab. ” In addition to the strong research program, the representation of women in STEM at CMU played a huge role in attracting her to Pittsburgh. “Both of my department Chairs, and even the Dean of our College, are women!” Now a part of this formidable research community, Kate works on growing and nurturing her lab that focuses on how sensory information guides behavior. Bolstered by resources and community, Kate is perfectly poised to follow her curiosity and figure out what’s the next big question I can ask?
Find out more about the exciting research in the Hong lab here.
Check out Leslie’s full interview with Kate on October 18th, 2021 below or listen wherever you get your podcasts!
