معرفی
Alex Kwan is an Adjunct Associate Professor in Psychiatry at Yale School of Medicine and an Associate Professor in the Meinig School of Biomedical Engineering at Cornell University. He holds appointments in the Abraham Ribicoff Research Facilities and the Division of Neurocognition, Neurocomputation & Neurogenetics. Kwan earned a B.A.Sc. in Engineering Physics from Simon Fraser University and a Ph.D. in Applied Physics from Cornell University, followed by postdoctoral research at the University of California, Berkeley.
His research focuses on the mouse medial frontal cortex, investigating how dendritic plasticity underlies psychiatric drug actions and how cortical circuits enable flexible decision-making. His lab develops optical methods to record and control neural activity in behaving mice. Recent work explores psychedelics’ effects on anxiety, antidepressant mechanisms, and neural plasticity. Collaborations include studies on psilocybin, ketamine, and serotonergic pathways.
Key areas of study include structural neural plasticity, optogenetic techniques, and the neural basis of decision-making. The lab’s publications highlight interdisciplinary approaches, combining neuroscience, biomedical engineering, and computational methods. No specific awards are noted, but his work has been featured in Nature, Neuron, and ACS Chemical Neuroscience.
