Rate My Professor Song Yao

Associate Professor Song Yao is a prominent cardiovascular neuroscientist in the Faculty of Medicine, Dentistry and Health Sciences at the University of Melbourne, where he serves as Head of the Yao Laboratory for Cardiovascular Neuroscience in the Department of Anatomy and Physiology, School of Biomedical Sciences. He completed his PhD at Monash University, investigating the role of purines in central cardiovascular control. From 2003, Yao undertook postdoctoral training at the University of Bristol's Department of Clinical Sciences and Bristol Heart Institute, where he was awarded a British Heart Foundation Basic Science Intermediate Research Fellowship in 2007. In 2011, he returned to Australia to establish his independent research group at the Florey Institute of Neuroscience and Mental Health, affiliated with the University of Melbourne. He received an Australian Research Council Future Fellowship in 2017 (FT170100363), enabling further advancements in his research. Appointed Senior Lecturer and Theme Lead for Systems Neuroscience in the Department of Anatomy and Physiology in 2021, Yao now holds the position of Associate Professor and serves as Secretary of the International Society for Autonomic Neuroscience (ISAN).

Yao's research focuses on brain mechanisms regulating autonomic nervous system activity in health and disease, particularly neuroinflammation, blood-brain barrier dysfunction, and structural changes driving sympathetic overactivity in hypertension and heart failure. His laboratory examines cytokine-mediated neuroinflammation, brainstem neurogenesis in cardiovascular reflex control, orexin in hypoglycaemia-associated autonomic failure, and therapeutic optogenetic stimulation of the vagus nerve. Key publications include 'Purinergic modulation of cardiovascular function in the rat locus coeruleus' (2006), 'The splanchnic anti-inflammatory pathway: the current model of the inflammatory reflex needs to be revised' (2015, Autonomic Neuroscience), 'The role of the blood-brain barrier in hypertension' (2018, Experimental Physiology), 'Chemoattraction and recruitment of activated immune cells following optogenetic vagus nerve stimulation' (2019), and 'Fast and slow lanes of the vagus' (2024). Through international collaborations with University College London, University of Auckland, and Florey Institute researchers, leadership roles, and teaching in physiology and neuroscience at undergraduate and postgraduate levels, Yao significantly impacts autonomic neuroscience and cardiovascular disease research.