Scott Wilke

Scott Wilke, M.D., Ph.D., serves as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychiatry & Biobehavioral Sciences at the David Geffen School of Medicine, University of California, Los Angeles. He leads the Wilke Lab, which investigates medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) microcircuit assembly and function in both healthy and disease states.

His research focuses on how mPFC circuits develop during maturation, contribute to adaptive behaviors through complex interconnectivity, and become disrupted in psychiatric disorders. Key interests include neural circuit organization, developmental vulnerability periods, and behavioral pathophysiology, leveraging the mPFC's prolonged maturation as a critical window for understanding disease mechanisms.

Dr. Wilke actively recruits graduate students and postdoctoral researchers for collaborative projects with the DeNardo Lab, emphasizing multidisciplinary approaches to unravel cortical circuit dynamics. His work aims to identify fundamental mechanisms underlying psychiatric conditions through circuit-level analysis.

The Wilke Lab operates within UCLA's Center for Health Sciences, utilizing advanced neuroscience methodologies to examine mPFC circuitry. Current efforts target how developmental assembly errors lead to maladaptive behaviors, with implications for novel therapeutic interventions in psychiatric disease.