Cyndi Shannon Weickert

Cyndi Shannon Weickert
Born
Finger Lakes
Alma materNational Institute of Mental Health
Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai
Keuka College
Scientific career
InstitutionsUniversity of New South Wales

Cyndi Shannon Weickert is an American psychiatrist. Her research investigates the molecular developmental neurobiology of schizophrenia.

Early life and education

Weickert is from Finger Lakes.[1] She studied biology and psychology at Keuka College in upstate New York.[2] She completed her doctorate in Biomedical Science at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. She moved to the National Institute of Mental Health as a postdoctoral scholar, where she was eventually promoted to Unit Chief of Molecules in the Neurobiology Unit.[3]

Research and career

Weickert studies the neurobiological mechanisms that underpin psychiatric disease. She investigates the cellular and molecular-level changes that take place in the brains of people suffering from schizophrenia. In 2010, she moved to Neuroscience Research Australia,[4] where she leads the translational research team.[2] She was appointed to the Board of the Schizophrenia International Research Society in 2012.[4]

Weickert looks to understand the relationship between brain inflammation and psychiatric disorders, and uses this understanding to develop personalised treatment.[5] She has shown that people with schizophrenia who have more brain inflammation have more complex neuropathologies, including more cortical thinning and poorer cognition.[1]

Weickert has contributed extensively to the understanding of schizophrenia. She has uncovered the impact of neurodevelopment on schizophrenia, in particular the role of blunted neuroplasticity, and disturbances in the brain-derived neurotrophic factor and estrogen receptor.[3] Her work revealed that postnatal recruitment of cortical inhibitory neurons is abnormal in people with schizophrenia.[6]

Weickert was awarded the 2016 Biological Psychiatry Australia Isaac Schweitzer Award.[3] In 2021, she was awarded the Schizophrenia International Research Society Outstanding Translational Research Awardee.[2]

Personal life

Weickert had a twin brother who was diagnosed with schizophrenia at the age of 17.[1] He struggled to find effective treatment, and died from a cardiometabolic disease related to the schizophrenia in his early forties.

Selected publications

References

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