BME7900 Seminar: Alex Kwan (Cornell BME)

Description

Bio:
Alex Kwan received a Ph.D. in applied physics from Cornell University, where he worked on optical microscopy in the laboratory of Watt Webb. For postdoctoral studies, he was a Croucher Fellow studying neuroscience with Yang Dan at the University of California, Berkeley. He was an associate professor in the Department of Psychiatry at Yale School of Medicine, before joining the Cornell faculty in 2022.

The Kwan lab applies systems neuroscience and neuroengineering approaches to the study of mental health. We develop optical imaging techniques to visualize neural structure and activity dynamics in awake mice. We design quantitative paradigms to characterize behavior. We often complement the imaging and behavioral experiments with other molecular, electrophysiological, optical, and computational methods.

Current effort in the lab is directed towards understanding drug action in the brain. Psychiatric drugs exert powerful effects in humans characterized by altered perception, cognition, and mood. Our recent studies focus on compounds such as ketamine and serotonergic psychedelics that may be promising for treating depression. We want to know how these drugs produce therapeutic behavioral effects through modifying the connectivity and functions of neural circuits. We leverage the neurobiological insights to develop novel screening methods for preclinical drug development. Our long-term goal is to discover effective and safe strategies for treating depression.