Youjun received her Ph.D. degree in Cellular and Molecular Physiology from University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 2010 under the mentorship of Dr. William Snider. She stayed in Dr. Snider’s lab for one additional year as a post-doctoral research fellow. Her research focus in the Snider lab was studying the roles of Adenomatous Polyposis Coli (APC) in neuronal morphogenesis. Youjun worked at The Scripps Research Institute as a postdoctoral research associate studying autism and brain development. She returned to UNC-Chapel Hill and joined the Cohen lab in 2016.