Dr. Yang is entering her second year of fellowship at the VA Mental Illness Research and Clinical Center, investigating the neurobiology of schizophrenia. She completed her residency in psychiatry at UCLA’s Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior in 2014; prior to that she received her M.D. and Ph.D. in neuroscience from Yale University. She is interested in the neural underpinnings of psychosis and schizophrenia, as well as identifying novel treatments for the cognitive and negative deficits found in schizophrenia. The project funded by the Friends of Semel will allow her to explore the potential of N-acetylcysteine, a widely available modified amino acid currently used as an antioxidant dietary supplement, to improve the daily life functioning of patients with schizophrenia, as well as to investigate the molecular changes that happen in the brain during treatment.