Tony Yu-chen Tsai MD, PhD

Tony was born and raised in Taiwan. He pursued his dual interests in biomedical science and mathematics by obtaining a BS degree in Mathematics, an MD degree from National Taiwan University, and then an MS degree in Biomathematics from UCLA. At UCLA, he worked with James Liao to engineer synthetic oscillators (bacteria that turn fluorescent proteins on and off like Christmas lights). The experience taught him the stochastic nature of biochemical reactions. He became fascinated by how cells and tissues can channel the noisy molecular interactions into reproducible cell functions and tissue morphology. In graduate school, he worked with Jim Ferrell and Julie Theriot to understand the regulatory circuits that allow precise cell cycle oscillation in frog embryos and efficient chemotaxis in human neutrophils. For his postdoc, he worked with Sean Megason and Carl-Philipp Heisenberg to study how multicellular patterns form robustly in the zebrafish spinal cord. After joining the Developmental Biology department at Washington University in St. Louis, his lab will continue to work at the intersection of developmental biology and physical sciences, with the goal to understand systems-level principles of pattern formation and morphogenesis during embryo development. Besides science, Tony enjoys watching baseball and traveling. He is a loyal fan of the Taiwanese Brother Elephants baseball team. And his passion for traveling has taken him to more than 40 countries around the world.