Primary cilia in neurophysiology and neurological disorders ,Developmental Neuroscience, Molecular Genetics, Human stem cells & disease modelling, neurobiology and viral infection.

Dr. Hor’s scientific training began in a molecular neurobiology lab at the National University of Singapore. She then pursued her PhD majoring in developmental genetics at The University of Hong Kong, studying hindbrain neural tube patterning and Hedgehog signaling under the supervision of Professor Mai Har SHAM and Professor Chi Chung HUI at the Department of Biochemistry. Upon graduation, she joined Duke-NUS Medical School Singapore as a postdoctoral research fellow, pursuing research topics in the realm of developmental and regenerative neuroscience. 

In 2018, Dr. Hor obtained her first independent research grant, which is a prestigious and competitive national level research fund for young investigator-Young Individual Research Grant (YIRG) funded by the Ministry of Health, Singapore. In 2019, Catherine joined HKBU and established her lab as a faculty member of the Department of Chemistry. In 2021, Dr. Hor was awarded one of the most competitive major research grant in Hong Kong, Collaborative Research Fund (CRF), in which she leads a team of international scientists from Hong Kong, Singapore and mainland China to investigate the cellular and neurobiology of viral infection. 

Her research strives to understand the molecular and cellular pathology of hereditary neurological and neuropsychiatric disorders, with particular interest in deciphering the neurochemistry and neurological roles of an under-appreciated but instrumental cell-cell signaling organelle, the primary cilium. Her current projects involve mouse disease models, and human induced-pluripotent stem cells disease modeling of ciliopathy-like disorders. Her cross-disciplinary collaborative projects with local and international scientists focus on the development of non-invasive biomarkers and therapeutics targeting pediatric neuropsychiatric disorders.

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