Jane Ying Wu

Jane Ying Wu (; September 23, 1963 – July 10, 2024) was a Chinese-born American neuroscientist who served as professor of neurology at the Feinberg School of Medicine of Northwestern University.

Wu died by suicide at her home in Chicago in 2024 after the forced closure of her laboratory at Northwestern University, where she had served as professor for nearly two decades. Her research area was in the field of post-transcriptional gene regulation and its involvement in human pathogenesis.

Early life and education Wu was born in 1963 in the city of Hefei, Anhui, China. She lived with her grandmother while her parents were in a labor camp.

Wu attended Shanghai Medical University for undergraduate studies and graduated with a Bachelor of Medicine in 1986. She traveled to the United States for graduate studies and received a Doctor of Philosophy in cancer biology from the Stanford University School of Medicine in 1991.

Career After receiving her doctorate, Wu conducted postdoctoral research at Harvard University.

In 2005, Wu joined Northwestern University where her research concentrated on two closely related biological processes, RNA splicing and the role of regulatory RNA-binding proteins. The same year, she was elected to the American Society for Clinical Investigation.

Death As a researcher in neurology and genetics at Northwestern University, Wu was the subject of an investigation by NIH related to the China Initiative. She was recruited in 2009 by the Thousand Talents Programme to help run a lab and train students at the Institute of Biophysics in Beijing. However it is uncertain if this was the trigger for the investigation. She was never charged or found to have committed a wrongdoing related to her research ties to China. NIH cleared her of any wrongdoing. According to Xiao-Fan Wang, a professor at Duke University, the investigation killed Wu's career. Despite having worked at Northwestern for almost 20 years, a lawsuit alleges that the university "limited the work of Dr. Wu, partly closed her lab space, broke up her research team, reassigned her grants to her white male faculty colleagues, and left her isolated". Allegedly, even after the investigation was closed, Northwestern cut her salary due to lack of funding, increased the requirements needed for her to restore funding with only a limited chance to meet them, and refused to restore the grant that had been taken away from her. In May 2024, Northwestern shut down her lab. The lawsuit alleges that Northwestern sent police to evict Wu from her office and led her away in handcuffs to be sent to Northwestern's mental institution. The medical school where Wu had worked for about two decades removed her profile page while her publication and grant records were removed from the Northwestern Scholar website. Jane Wu committed suicide on July 10, 2024.