Zachary Weil

BIOGRAPHY

Zachary Weil is an Associate Faculty Member who works with Faculty Member Randy Nelson to recommend the scientific literature in their field.

Zachary Weil also has responsibility for checking the contents of the following journals to ensure that the highest quality research relevant to their own interests within these publications is comprehensively and systematically evaluated for F1000:

- Journal of Neuroscience
- Hormones and Behavior

ACADEMIC POSITION:
Research Assistant Professor, Department of Neuroscience, Ohio State University College of Medicine

EDUCATION:
• Postdoctoral Fellow, Rockefeller University (Donald W Pfaff and Bruce S McEwen) 2008-2010
• Doctor of Philosophy in Neuroscience, Ohio State University (Randy J Nelson) 2004-2008
• Bachelor of Science, Ohio State University, Graduation with honors, with distinction and cum laude 2004

MEMBERSHIPS/AWARDS:
• University Honors and Scholars Delegate to Sao Paolo Research Exchange Program, The Ohio State University, 2003
• Denman Undergraduate Research Forum, Winner for Social and Behavioral Sciences, 2003
• Society for Neuroscience, Graduate Student Travel Award, November, 2007
• Society for Behavioral Endocrinology, Best Poster Award, June 2007
• Society for Behavioral Neuroendocrinology, NSF Young Investigator Award, June 2009

RESEARCH INTERESTS:
I am interested broadly in questions of basic and translational neuroscience that focuses on how environmental and temporal variables can interact with the immune, autonomic and neuroendocrine systems to control physiology and behavior. Further, I am interested in understanding how environmental variables can render organisms differentially susceptible to nervous system injuries and how these types of phenomena can be studied to help develop treatments for human diseases.

Specifically my interests include the regulation of reproductive physiology by day length in seasonally breeding rodents. Many vertebrates can determine, quite accurately, seasonal time by attending to the amount of day light or photoperiod and whether that photoperiod is increasing or decreasing. In general, short day lengths inhibit reproduction and enhance immune function in the laboratory when all other conditions are held constant. I am interested in how day length interacts with other environmental factors like social cues and stressors to regulate the reproductive neuroendocrine system, learning and memory and affect. Further I am interested in interactions between reproductive physiology and the immune system. Additionally, I study how environmental cues early in life can establish reproductive and immunological phenotypes later in life, a phenomenon of great clinical interest given the robust epidemiological finding of seasonal and season-of-birth patterns in human disease. I also am interested in how biological timing alters cerebral ischemic outcomes. Our lab has previously identified endogenous rhythms in the susceptibility to ischemic cell death and inflammation related to fluctuations in neuroendocrine systems and we have studies ongoing to investigate the mechanisms for these phenomena.

HOME PAGE
http://biomed.osu.edu/neuroscience/16441.cfm