Weber Lab

Franz Weber
Assistant Professor
 fweber@pennmedicine.upenn.edu

I've started my scientific career with flies and how they compute motion from moving images. Working on sensory processing, I've realized how much the activity of sensory neurons depends on the actual state of the animal. This realization triggered my interest in brain state modulation and more generally, how the brain spontaneously, on its own, slowly changes its global state. In other words, my interest has turned from how the brain represents external stimuli, to how the brain spontaneously behaves on its own without any input. And, in my opinion, the ultimate spontaneous brain activity is REM sleep: While we are asleep, regularly, about every 90 min, large regions of the brain stem and specific forebrain areas suddenly become highly active and we have only vague ideas why this happens.

Jiso Hong

Jiso is interested in the neural circuits regulating behavioral deficits expressed in various psychological disorders. During the graduate school in KAIST, she studied the role of the medial prefrontal cortex in chronic stress and fear extinction, well known models for mood disorder and PTSD. At Penn, Jiso wants to investigate how sleep is associated with these psychological disorders and underlying neural circuits.

Xi Jin

Xi is focused on understanding the principles of neural circuits regulating sleep behavior. He studied the neural pathways and underlying molecules which integrate environmental inputs to regulate sleep in Drosophila during his doctoral studies at Southeast University, China. At Penn, Xi wants to answer how sleep is initiated and maintained in rodents. What is the first trigger of the synchronized oscillations spanning the brain in sleep behavior? How are these oscillations controlled and how do they change throughout sleep? 

Mandy Schott
Kirchstein-NRSA (F31) Predoctoral Fellow (NGG)

Mandy graduated from Williams College in 2015, where she studied anxiety-like behaviors in rodents for my honors thesis in Neuroscience. Before coming to Penn, she worked as a research assistant in Kamran Khodakhah's lab at Albert Einstein College of Medicine, investigating the biological and behavioral roles of cerebellar projections in the ventral tegmental area and prefrontal cortex. As a researcher, she is most interested in defining neural circuits, and how specific populations of cells communicate to generate essential human behaviors such as sleep. At Penn, Mandy aims to use anatomical, electrophysiological, and behavioral techniques to understand the mechanisms underlying the control of REM sleep.

Emily Pickup
NSF Graduate Research Fellow (NGG)

Emily is interested in the ways sleep biology impacts behavior. She graduated from the University of Michigan in 2018, where she studied replay as a mechanism for sleep-dependent memory consolidation. Before starting at Penn, she worked as a preclinical research associate at Alkahest, a biotech company developing therapeutics for diseases of aging. She was looking at how these therapeutics might renormalize sleep patterns in elderly individuals. At Penn, Emily will use electrophysiology, circuit tracing, and behavioral methods to study how REM-related brain activity impacts physiology and behavior.

David Lozano
NSF Graduate Research Fellow (NGG)

David graduated in 2017 from Michigan State University with a BS in Neuroscience and Psychology. While at MSU, he was involved in investigating sex differences in neurogenesis in rodents. After graduating, he began his work as a PREP scholar at the University of Michigan, where he researched the roles specific genes play in neurodegenerative diseases in Drosophila. At Penn he aims to take a systems level approach that combines experiments and computational modeling to understand the neural circuits regulating sleep. 

Leilei Hao

Leilei is an undergrad at the University of Pennsylvania studying Computational Biology with a joint minor in Neuroscience & Health Services Management. She is very interested in mammalian sleep behaviors and hopes to use computational methods to elucidate why we enter REM sleep.

Akshita Panigrahi

Akshita is an undergraduate student at Penn studying bioengineering. Her interest in the intersection between neuro and computer science led her to the Weber Lab, where she aims to apply a computational lens to model the mechanisms governing sleep. With her engineering studies at Penn, she hopes to one day leverage brain-computer interfaces and computational modeling for the treatment of neurological disorders.

Caroline Johansen

Caroline is a sophomore studying Neuroscience at the University of Pennsylvania with a strong interest in neurodegenerative diseases. She is interested in understanding how deficits in REM sleep can lead to neurodegeneration.

Matthew Kim
Undergraduate Researcher

Matthew is a sophomore studying neuroscience at the University of Pennsylvania with a strong interest in the mechanisms of anesthesia. Through the Weber Lab, he hopes to explore the intricate relationships between neurotransmitter receptors, REM sleep, and anesthesia.

Ray Shin

Ray's interest lies in neuroscience, but specifically in the connection between the physical brain and the metaphysical consciousness. Right now he's interested to see how the concept of sleep and dream play into this connection and how it could be manipulated in the future.