The neuropsychiatric and human genetics group of SJTU is leaded by Professor HE Lin. This group focuses on medical genetics of monogenic and polygenic disease, especially mental disorders like schizophrenia and bipolar disorder, and neurodegenerative illness like Alzheimer's diseases. There are vast hereditary differences among human populations, and a lot of genetic polymorphisms cause rare monogenic diseases and contribute to a significant extent to the susceptibility to common psychiatric diseases. The mission is to identify those disease genes and their pathogenic mutations and explain the molecular mechanisms of their actions.

Since its founding in 1996, this group has established the largest neuropsychiatric sample database in the country and has collected many monogenic disease pedigrees. As part of its findings, it successfully identified that IHH was the disease gene for Brach-dactyly A-1. The work was published in Nature Genetics. The work attracted wide public attention and was ranked No.1 of the 10 major science and technology achievements made in Chinese universities for the year 2001. The discovery that ApoE was significantly associated with schizophrenia in China's Han population was awarded the NARSAD prize. It has expanded the research area to proteomics, function genomics, and DNA microarray technology development.

Led by the Director and 3-4 senior researchers, the lab has more than 30 graduate students and technicians.