She was nominated for the Friedmund Neumann Prize by the CEO and scientific director at Helmholtz Munich, Univ.-Prof. Dr. med. Dr. h.c. Matthias H. Tschöp.

Born in China and raised in Singapore, Na Cai completed her undergraduate training at the University of Cambridge, UK, and then earned her Ph.D. at the University of Oxford at the Wellcome Centre for Human Genetics. Since 2019, she has been a principal investigator at Helmholtz Pioneer Campus and Computational Health Center at Helmholtz Munich, as well as a Junior Fellow at the Chair of Translational Genomics at TUM School of Medicine.

While in Oxford, Na Cai led the data analysis efforts in an international consortium seeking to elucidate the genetic basis of Major Depressive Disorder (MDD), which was published in Nature in 2015. She was able to show how data collection affects the findings of genetic studies on MDD, thus setting a new working standard in the field of psychiatric genetics.

With her scientific ambition to move from a mere phenomenological categorization of MDD to a molecular understanding of the disease, she makes a major contribution to the further development of a research field that is both urgent and necessary, as its importance grows daily.