Zoé Christenson Wick, Ph.D.

Zoé Christenson Wick is a postdoctoral fellow at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in the labs of Tristan Shuman and Denise Cai. She obtained her B.S. in psychology with a concentration in neuroscience from Saint Olaf College before earning her doctorate in neuroscience from the University of Minnesota.

As a graduate student, Christenson Wick uncovered the influence of long-range inhibitory neurons in the healthy and epileptic hippocampus under the mentorship of Esther Krook-Magnuson. During her postdoctoral training, she sought to understand how the precise timing of inhibitory neuron spiking influences cognition in healthy and epileptic mice. To pursue this line of investigation, Christenson Wick developed and validated a novel open-source tool called PhaSER, which allows one to simultaneously manipulate and monitor inhibitory neuron spiking relative to ongoing brain activity, in particular to theta oscillations. As she transitions to independence, Christenson Wick will use PhaSER to investigate how subtle changes in neural activity that occur early in the aging process may lead to a cascade of other changes, altering hippocampal circuitry and function and triggering age-related cognitive decline.

Christenson Wick is highly involved in academic service, community engagement, teaching, and leadership initiatives and is the recipient of several awards including NIH Pre- and Post-doctoral NRSA Fellowships, a MnDRIVE Neuromodulation Fellowship, University of Minnesota Doctoral Dissertation Fellowship, Friedman Brain Institute Postdoc Innovator Award, and an American Epilepsy Society Postdoctoral Fellowship.