I study how the nervous system regulates hemodynamics, and how that regulation can be restored after spinal cord injury. I build closed-loop neuromodulation systems, including brain-computer interfaces, that read autonomic signals and act on the circuits producing them. Each system is a therapy and a probe at once: what restores blood pressure control also reveals how that control is normally maintained. Digital phenotyping extends the same question into clinical and real-world settings, where I recently published a validated measure of autonomic dysfunction after spinal cord injury. I am currently a Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Calgary in the Phillips Lab, supported by the CIHR Postdoctoral Fellowship and the Eyes High Postdoctoral Fellowship.

Research Interests

• Circuit mechanisms of autonomic cardiovascular control
• Closed-loop neuromodulation for hemodynamic stability after spinal cord injury
• Digital phenotyping of autonomic dysfunction in clinical and real-world settings

Selected Publications

1. Yang, W., et al., (2026). Creating true and false memories from forgotten information in Drosophila. Nature Neuroscience.
2. Yang, W., et al. (2026). Validating the ADFSCI hypotension symptom domain as a scalable patient-reported outcome measure in spinal cord injury
3. Yang, W., Meng, Y., Li, D., & Wen, Q. (2019). Visual contrast modulates operant learning responses in larval zebrafish. Frontiers in behavioral neuroscience, 13, 4.
4. Cong, L., Wang, Z., Chai, Y., Hang, W., Shang, C., Yang, W., … & Wen, Q. (2017). Rapid whole brain imaging of neural activity in freely behaving larval zebrafish (Danio rerio). Elife, 6, e28158.

Selected Awards

• 2026 July – Libin Publication Award (Libin Cardiovascular Institute)
• 2026 March – Postdoctoral Fellowship (Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR))
• 2024 January – Eyes High Postdoctoral Fellowship (University of Calgary)