Wenbin Yang, Ph.D.

Postdoctoral Fellow, University of Calgary, Calgary, AB, Canada
Email: wenbin.yang@ucalgary.ca | Web: young24.github.io
ORCID: 0000-0003-3100-5202

Research Interests

Circuit mechanisms of autonomic and cardiovascular-neural function; neurovascular regulation in spinal cord injury; brain-machine interfaces and closed-loop neuromodulation as therapeutic interventions for autonomic dysfunction.

Education

Ph.D., Neurobiology | University of Basel / Friedrich Miescher Institute (FMI), Basel, Switzerland | 2019–2024
Supervisor: Johannes Felsenberg (Group Leader, FMI)
Thesis: Creating true and false memories from forgotten information in Drosophila

M.S., Biophysics | University of Science and Technology of China (USTC), Hefei, China | 2016–2019
Supervisor: Quan Wen

Academic Appointments

Postdoctoral Research Fellow | Phillips Lab, University of Calgary, Calgary, AB | 2024–present
Supervisor: Aaron Phillips (Associate Professor, Physiology & Pharmacology)

Publications

† denotes equal contribution; * denotes corresponding/senior author

Peer-Reviewed Journal Articles

1. Yang, W., et al. (2026). Scalable digital assessment of hypotension symptom burden anchored to blood pressure responses in spinal cord injury. npj Digital Medicine (In Revision).

2. Yang, W., Pavão-Delgado, M., Warnecke, C., Çoban, B., Zattera, B., & Felsenberg, J. (2025). Creating true and false memories from forgotten information in Drosophila. Nature Neuroscience (Accepted).

3. Yang, W., Smith, M.N., Rimok, J., Gandhi, A.P., Hankov, N., Macellari, N., Nijland, A.E.J., van Nes, I., Asboth, L., Squair, J., Larkin-Kaiser, K.A., Bloch, J., Huh, S., Wecht, J.M., McKenna, S.L., Courtine, G., & Phillips, A.A. (2025). Validation of the autonomic dysfunction after spinal cord injury questionnaire for hypotension. Neurology (Submitted).

4. Yang, W., Meng, Y., Li, D., & Wen, Q. (2019). Visual contrast modulates operant learning responses in larval zebrafish. Frontiers in Behavioral Neuroscience, 13, 4. https://doi.org/10.3389/fnbeh.2019.00004

5. 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. https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.28158

Manuscripts in Preparation

1. Yang, W., Miller, R., Hassan, O., Choi, D., Yu, R., Molina, L., & Phillips, A. DeepGait: an AI-based toolbox for automated motor recovery assessment after spinal cord injury. eLife (In preparation).

Grants & Fellowships

Conference Presentations

Invited / Oral

• Yang, W. Brain-spine interface stabilizes hemodynamics after spinal cord injury. 11th International BCI Meeting, Banff, AB, Canada. 2025.
• Yang, W. Creating true and false memories from forgotten information. German Neuroscience Society (NWG) Conference (Invited), Göttingen, Germany. 2023.
• Yang, W. Creating true and false memories from forgotten information. Cold Spring Harbor Meeting: Neurobiology of Drosophila, New York, NY, USA. 2023.

Contributed Oral

• Yang, W. Creating true and false memories from forgotten information. Mushroom Body Meeting, Göttingen, Germany. 2023.
• Yang, W. Creating true and false memories from forgotten information. FMI Annual Meeting (Best Presentation Award), Grindelwald, Switzerland. 2022.

Poster

• Yang, W. 19th Canadian Neuroscience Meeting (CAN 2026), Montréal, QC, Canada. May 2026. (Accepted)
• Yang, W. 5th Imaging Structure and Function in the Zebrafish Brain Conference, Brighton, UK. 2018.
• Yang, W. Advances in Optical Imaging of Living Cells & Organisms, Cold Spring Harbor Asia, Suzhou, China. 2018.

Teaching Experience

Teaching Assistant, Computational Neuroscience
University of Science and Technology of China | 2016–2017

• Assisted instruction for undergraduate course; supported problem sets and computational labs.

Workshop Lecturer, Computational Methods for Neuroscience
University of Basel | Fall 2023 (10 graduate students)

• Organized and delivered a graduate-level workshop on image processing and data analysis pipelines using Python; used live lab data as teaching examples.

Student Supervision & Mentorship

Undergraduate Students Supervised

Danyang Li’s undergraduate thesis resulted in a peer-reviewed publication (Frontiers in Behavioral Neuroscience, 2019).

Additional Mentoring

• Mentored 3 undergraduate students in USTC Wen Lab on behavioral neuroscience experimental design and data analysis (2016–2019).
• Mentored 2 undergraduate students at Phillips Lab (UCalgary) in SCI behavioral protocols, locomotor assessment, and AI-based analysis pipelines (2025).

Professional Service

Reviewer – Conference Abstracts

• FMI Annual Meeting, Friedrich Miescher Institute for Biomedical Research (annual)

Community Leadership

• Co-organized transdisciplinary 3-day workshop across departments, University of Basel. 2024.

Leadership

• Competed in China Undergraduate Physics Tournament (CUPT) as university representative; team won bronze medal (national). The following year, founded the first university-wide selection process for CUPT (replacing ad hoc team assembly), coached the selected team to gold medal (national). Selection system remains in institutional use. USTC, 2016–2017.

Research Projects

Brain-Machine Interface for Hemodynamic Stabilization after Spinal Cord Injury

Developing a closed-loop brain-spine interface that reads cortical autonomic signals via fiber photometry and electrophysiology, and delivers targeted spinal neuromodulation to stabilize blood pressure in SCI. This work bridges circuit-level understanding of cardiovascular-neural control with a deployable therapeutic intervention. Active in rodent models; translational validation ongoing.

Hypercapnia as a Therapeutic Strategy after Spinal Cord Injury

Investigating controlled CO₂ elevation (hypercapnia) as a non-invasive intervention to improve neurovascular coupling and hemodynamic recovery after SCI. Studies are conducted in both mouse and pig models, enabling mechanistic dissection alongside translational feasibility assessment.

Neurovascular Coupling in Spinal Cord Injury

Using two-photon imaging to simultaneously capture blood flow dynamics and neural activity in the injured spinal cord. Goal is to identify early neurovascular disruption as a therapeutic target and define windows for intervention.

Circuit Mechanisms of True and False Memory Formation (Ph.D. work)

Identified distinct dopamine circuit components in Drosophila that differentially encode true versus false memories arising from partially overlapping experiences. Established a behavioral paradigm for inducing false memories from forgotten information; mapped the underlying neural architecture using in vivo imaging and circuit manipulation.

DeepGait: AI-Based Motor Recovery Assessment after SCI

Building an open-source automated toolbox to replace subjective manual scoring (e.g., BBB scale) with reproducible, high-throughput computer vision analysis of locomotor recovery in rodent SCI models.

Professional Development

• Neurotechnology NIN Summer School, Netherlands Institute for Neuroscience, Amsterdam

  2022

• Experimental Neuroscience Cajal Bootcamp

  2021

Languages

English (fluent), Mandarin Chinese (native)

References

Aaron Phillips, Ph.D. | Associate Professor, Physiology & Pharmacology, University of Calgary
wenbin.yang@ucalgary.ca (postdoctoral supervisor)

Johannes Felsenberg, Ph.D. | Group Leader, Friedrich Miescher Institute for Biomedical Research, Basel
johannes.felsenberg@fmi.ch (doctoral supervisor)

Florian Engert, Ph.D. | Professor, Department of Molecular & Cellular Biology, Harvard University
florian@mcb.harvard.edu

Quan Wen, Ph.D. | Professor, University of Science and Technology of China
qwen@ustc.edu.cn (M.S. supervisor)

Gilles Laurent, Ph.D. | Director & Professor, Max Planck Institute for Brain Research, Frankfurt, Germany
gl@brain.mpg.de (B.S. thesis supervisor)