Daniel Tang

About Daniel Tang

Daniel Tang was born in Canada and is the son of immigrants who left China to pursue higher education and opportunities for a better life. Settling in Portland, Oregon, Daniel was deeply influenced by his father’s admiration for American entrepreneurs and his mother’s love for the region’s abundant wildlife. In high school, Daniel explored these interests at the Oregon Health and Sciences University, where his work in the lab of Claudio Mello sparked his fascination with the brain and exposed him to the connection between research and patient care.

Daniel’s early influences instilled in him both a desire to build for others and a love for biology and neuroscience. He would combine these passions as a bioengineering undergraduate at Stanford, where he joined the lab of Karl Deisseroth. In the lab, Daniel was inspired by the power of interdisciplinary technologies to uncover new insights about the brain. He would develop and apply several novel bioengineering tools, including a non-invasive light-based pacemaker, to explore fundamental neuroscience questions, such as the neural mechanisms behind delayed reward-seeking behavior and how encoding of cardiac state in the brain influences learning and decision-making. His research led to coauthored publications in Cell and Nature, as well as him receiving the Firestone Medal at Stanford. 

In his junior year of college, Daniel’s grandmother suffered a major stroke. Greatly affected by this news, Daniel channeled his efforts toward creating a real-world solution for patients like his grandma. He joined an early-stage startup, Zeit Medical, and drew on his background in neuroscience and engineering to create wearable medical devices that use machine learning to detect oncoming strokes. 

Graduating from Stanford bioengineering summa cum laude and with a master’s in computer science, Daniel is now pursuing physician scientist training in the UCLA-Caltech MD/PhD program. Under the guidance of Mikhail Shapiro (2004 Fellow) at Caltech, Daniel is developing cell-based therapies that can be dynamically controlled in the body with non-invasive ultrasound. He hopes that these technologies, which enable precise control of the therapy once delivered into the body, will pave the way for new medicines that are more effective, produce minimal off-target side effects, and eliminate the need for invasive procedures. Outside of research, Daniel has founded a surgery workshop organization at his medical school, leads education initiatives as codirector of the MD/PhD mentorship committee, and is a cohost of the Double Docs podcast, which sheds light on the MD/PhD pathway for future trainees. 

Daniel plans on becoming a physician scientist who works at the intersection of neuroscience, bioengineering, and medicine to develop more effective and accessible therapies for patients facing neuropsychiatric disease.