Fei-Yang Huang
Fei-Yang Huang
Wellcome Trust Early Career Research Fellow
Biography
Dr Fei-Yang Huang (黃飛揚) is a Wellcome Trust Early Career Research Fellow in the Department of Experimental Psychology at the University of Oxford and a Junior Research Fellow at Wolfson College, Oxford. He received his MD, with a minor degree in Economics, from National Taiwan University, and completed his PhD in Neurophysiology at the University of Cambridge.
His research studies how the brain integrates sensory and physiological signals to shape learning and decision-making. A central focus of his work is understanding how the brain represents nutrient rewards, such as fat and sugar, to encode subjective value and guide choices between competing options. By combining computer-based behavioral tasks, single-neuron recordings in behaving nonhuman primates, machine-learning methods, and targeted brain stimulation, Dr Huang investigates how distinct reward features are represented in the brain and how their neural organization shapes computation and choice behavior. His research advances understanding of how the brain flexibly adapts behavior to reflect physiological needs, with implications for disorders affecting human motivation, decision-making, and metabolic health.
Dr Huang’s research has received international recognition, including the 2025 European Brain and Behaviour Society (EBBS) Young Investigator Award and the 2025 IBRO/Society for Neuroscience International Travel Fellowship. He serves on the Journal of Neuroscience Early Career Researcher Advisory Board and co-leads the Behavioural and Cognitive Neuroscience (BEACON) Seminar at the University of Oxford. Supported by the Wellcome Early-Career Award, Dr Huang is extending his research to intracranial recordings in neurosurgical patients through collaborations with Caltech and Cedars-Sinai Medical Center. By bridging nonhuman primate neurophysiology with transcranial ultrasound neuromodulation and direct recordings from the human brain, his research aims to identify neural mechanisms of adaptive decision-making, which may provide new targets for neuromodulation in conditions involving maladaptive reward processing, including obesity, eating disorders, and addiction.
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