Wesley Smith

Scientific / Research Experience 
Postdoctoral Research
Invited NRF Brain Pool Scientific Fellow | KIST & Korea University | Il-Joo Cho Lab 2021 - Present
Project: Development of electrophysiological biomarkers and drug test platforms for the treatment 
of neurological disease using high-density neural probes in thick brain slices
Biopharmaceutical Scientist | Amgen | Global Medical Affairs Neuroinflamm. Division 2020 - 2021
 Responsible for Aimovig MoA research using whole cell and multielectrode slice & in vivo recordings 
 Optimized trigeminal ganglia culture protocols and electrophysiology optics & solutions 
 Initiated drug target identification process through literature review, mutant tissue dissection, & NGS 
Senior Development Engineer | W.M. Keck Center for Neurophysics 2018 - 2020
Project: Adaptation of silicon probes for high-density chronic dendritic electrophysiology
 Created novel surface chemistry protocols for electroplating ultra-low impedance ( < 20 kΩ) 
neuroprobes and showed imaging correlates of impedance changes through electron microscopy
 Performed chronic implantations of these NeuroNex electrode arrays with new techniques to assess 
brain information structure, resulting in robust neural signals for more than three months
 Adapted Mountainlab with Python/MATLAB/Ubuntu bash scripting for the lab’s tetrode array 
recordings, as well as UCLA NeuroNex recordings, which automated the data pipeline and reduced 
clustering time by more than 100-fold 
Doctoral Research
PhD Candidate | UCLA NSIDP | Dissertation advisor: Sotiris C. Masmanidis 2012 - 2018
Project: High-density in vivo recordings for multi-region correlates of addiction and encoding
 Piloted a novel 1D head-fixed virtual reality CPP test for use with natural and drug rewards, as well as 
developed a novel odor preference test for head-fixed mice with pupillometry based on cocaine 
conditioning and wrote a machine vision algorithm for data analysis in MATLAB and LabVIEW
 Performed tracing studies to inform custom 512-channel NeuroNex probe design, used these probes 
to simultaneously record cortex and striatum in vivo, and demonstrated that proportion of frontostriatal 
inhibition and degree of gamma coherence correlates to drug-cue induced behavioral arousal 
 Developed MATLAB toolkits to assess critical neural population dynamics in vivo as well as a novel 
method to quantify critical tuning in the cortex, showing it is enhanced in early cocaine abstinence 
and predicts cue-induced behavioral arousal, and that the system complexity in the the cortex and 
striatum is coupled to criticality in drug-naïve mice, but the correlation is altered in dosed mice 
 This project formed part of the basis for two P50 DA grants, an R01 DA grant, and the UCLA NSF 
NeuroNex Technology Hub grants, all worth more than $4 million
Graduate Student | UCLA NSIDP / EE. Dept | Advisor: Jin Hyung Lee 2011 - 2012
Project: Development of an optogenetic fMRI model of epilepsy and targeted seizure propagation
 Established a novel optogenetic model of epilepsy in rats coupled to fMRI and EEG in vivo at the 
whole-brain circuit level and created a new behavioral protocol to assess seizures
 Discovered reproducible, frequency-dependent neural networks recruited by dorsal and intermediate 
hippocampal optogenetic stimulation of pyramidal neurons, which results in different seizure types
 This work was part of the basis for an R01 grant worth $1.8 million

Graduate Rotation Research
Graduate Student | UCLA NSIDP 2011
 Learned in vitro whole-cell patch clamp slice recording techniques in Felix Schweizer’s laboratory
 Learned 2-photon microscopy and Ca2+ imaging techniques in Joshua Trachtenberg’s laboratory
Honors Undergraduate Research
Undergraduate Researcher | U. of Iowa Biology Dept. | Advisor: Daniel Eberl 2008 through 2010
Project: Investigating acoustic trauma in Drosophila melanogaster
 Designed and assembled a custom acoustic trauma chamber for flies, made in vivo recordings from 
Drosophila antennae, uncovered hidden auditory phenotypes in flies heterozygous for a mutant 
ATPase, and was the first to reveal acoustic trauma / noise induced hearing loss (NIHL) in insects
 Generated new fly lines with reporters in mitochondria to assess oxidative stress as a basis for NIHL
 This Honors thesis was the direct basis of a successful R21 grant worth $414,000

Education
The University of California, Los Angeles | Ph.D. in Neuroscience, GPA: 3.65 2010 through 2018
Thesis: Interindividual variation in frontostriatal circuit dynamics correlates to degree of 
neural criticality and predicts cocaine cue-evoked behavioral arousal during early abstinence
The University of Iowa | Bachelor of Science in Neurobiology with Honors, GPA: 3.55 2006 through 2010 
Thesis: Acoustic trauma in Drosophila melanogaster
Minor in Asian Languages and Literature (Japanese)

Honors & Awards
KSBNS 2023 Outstanding Poster Presentation Award 2023
NRF Outstanding Invited Brainpool Scientific Fellow 2021
Nominated by UCLA for the Schmidt Science Fellows Program 2018
T32 Predoctoral Training Grant NIH T32DA024635 recipient 
UCLA Department of Neurobiology Retreat, best poster award 2013
Awarded University Fellowship (UCLA) 2012
Shortlist applicant to Janelia Farm’s summer undergraduate program 2009
Admitted into the Undergraduate Honors Research program at the University of Iowa 2009
Dean’s List at the University of Iowa 2008 & 2009
Awarded University of Iowa Tuition Scholarship 2006
Awarded Marguerite V. Brown Trust Scholarship 2006
Inducted into the National Honor Society 2005
Invited to National Youth Leadership Forum on Medicine 2005
Won Omaha’s Rotary Club Camp Enterprise business competition 2005