Dr. Dong is a Professor in the Departments of Neuroscience, Dermatology, Neurosurgery at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. He is also an Investigator at Howard Hughes Medical Institute. He completed his PhD degree in Biochemistry at UCLA and his postdoc training at Caltech. His laboratory has taken a multidisciplinary approach to understand the cellular and molecular mechanisms of pain and itch. His lab has identified and characterized a novel family of G protein-coupled receptors (GPCRs) called Mrgprs which are expressed in primary sensory neurons and innate immune cells and function as novel itch receptors. Dr. Dong has published over 160 papers, book chapters, reviews on his research and trained numerous successful PhD and MD/PhD students and postdoctoral fellows. He received Javits Neuroscience Investigator Award from NIH/NINDS in 2021 and a member of AAAS. He is also a scientific founder of two companies: Escient Pharmaceuticals in San Diego, CA and SereNeuro Therapeutics in Baltimore, MD.