April Shu, PhD

Chang Shu, also known as April Shu, is an Assistant Professor in the Center for Genetic Epidemiology and the Department of Population and Public Health Sciences at Keck School of Medicine of USC. Dr. Shu specializes in psychiatric genetics and epidemiology. Her work focuses on autism genetics, substance use epigenetics, and single-cell transcriptomics. She utilizes advanced statistical and machine learning techniques to uncover novel genetic and epigenetic factors in mental and behavioral disorders. Dr. Shu received her Ph.D. in Mental Health focusing on psychiatric genetics and a concurrent master’s degree in Biostatistics from Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. She also holds an additional master’s degree in Epidemiology from Harvard School of Public Health. Her current lab website is: https://www.aprilshulab.com/.

• College on Problems of Drug Dependence: Early Career Investigators Awards, 2020
• the DREAM challenge: Winner of single-cell transcriptome prediction, 2018
• Phi Beta Kappa Honor Society: Phi Beta Kappa, 2018
• Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health: Lucy Shum Memorial Scholarship for excellence in public health research, 2016

• Columbia University, New York, NY — Associate Research Scientist — 2023 — Psychiatric Genetics
• Yale University, New Haven, CT — Postdoc — 2020 — Psychiatric Genetics and Epigenetics
• Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD — PhD — 2018 — Mental Health
• Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD — MHS — 2018 — Biostatistics
• Harvard University, Boston, MA — MS — 2014 — Epidemiology
• Tsinghua University, Beijing, China — BS — 2012 — Chemistry

• Psychiatric genetics
• Epigenetics
• Autism spectrum disorder
• Substance use
• Machine learning

• Peters, Anne
• Wiemels, Joseph
• Liang, Gangning
• Thompson, Paul
• Leventhal, Adam
• Monk, David