Na Sun
The Sun Lab is developing advanced machine learning models to study communication between cells.
Achievements & Honors
Research Areas
Affiliations
Question
What are the fundamental principles of cell-cell communication and its biological implications across multiple biological scales?
Approach
Cell-cell communication is essential to the function of multicellular organisms — and increasing science’s understanding of it is crucial to deciphering how disease manifests in cells, tissues, and whole organisms. But researchers have much to learn about the basic science of cell-cell communication before we can begin to apply it to treat those diseases.
The Sun Lab aims to advance knowledge about cell-cell communication by developing and applying advanced machine learning and deep learning models that mine vast quantities of data drawn from studies on protein transcription and on the effects of spatial organization within individual cells.
We believe that this AI-driven approach will substantially expand science’s understanding of the principles and mechanisms underlying cell-cell communication — both within and between organs. One example: We anticipate gaining important insights about the interactions between the brain and the immune system, potentially creating new insights on the processes at work in neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s.
We hope to apply the insights gained from our AI-based analytic methods to a wide range of biological questions and biomedical applications. Ultimately, we want to accelerate the process of discovering new therapies that work by affecting cell-cell communication within tissues or between organs.
Bio
Sun earned an S.B. in Life Science at Linyi University in 2009, then completed an S.M. in Bioinformatics and Developmental Biology at the University of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in 2013. She conducted her master’s research in the lab of Jing-Dong Han, and continued as a research associate in the Han lab until 2016. In 2017, Sun came to Cambridge to work as a bioinformatics specialist at the Ragon Institute of MGH, MIT and Harvard. In 2020, Sun embarked on graduate studies on computational biology at MIT and earned a PhD in Computer Science in 2024. Sun joined Whitehead Institute as its inaugural AI Fellow in 2024.