Associate Professor, Department of Neuroscience, University of Minnesota

Distinguished Professor and Chairman, Department of Ophthalmology, University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine

José-Alain Sahel, MD is a distinguished professor, Chairman of the Department of Ophthalmology, The Eye and Ear Foundation Endowed Chair at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, and an adjunct professor of Robotics and Bioengineering at Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh.  He is an emeritus professor of Ophthalmology at Sorbonne Université and was the founding director of The Vision Institute (Sorbonne Université, Inserm, CNRS) in Paris, France.  

Trained at Paris University Medical School, Louis Pasteur University in Strasbourg and Harvard University, Dr. Sahel is a clinician-scientist conducting research on vision restoration focusing on cellular and molecular mechanisms underlying retinal degeneration and development of treatments for currently untreatable retinal diseases.  

As the founder of the Vision Institute in Paris and the new Vision Institute in Pittsburgh, Dr. Sahel has conducted and overseen more than 80 clinical trials on retinal conditions, some of them within the most advanced areas of biomedical technologies (first in human trials in retinal implants, gene therapy, stem cell therapy, optogenetics).  

With over 700 peer-reviewed articles and 90 patents, he is a prolific researcher and has co-founded companies developing innovative vision restoration therapies.  His esteemed memberships include the Académie des Sciences-Institut de France, the Académie des Technologies, the Association of American Physicians, the American Ophthalmology Society, the German National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina and the National Academy of Inventors.  

Dr. Sahel primarily focuses on retinal diseases and inherited retinal degenerations, relentlessly pursuing the understanding of the genetic and molecular foundations of these conditions.  He collaborates with international organizations and institutions, advancing the diagnosis and treatment of rare eye diseases, improving the lives of patients worldwide. 

Instructor, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai

Zoe Christenson Wick is an Instructor in Tristan Shuman's lab at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. She obtained her Bachelors in psychology with a concentration in neuroscience from St Olaf College before earning her PhD in neuroscience from the University of Minnesota. As a graduate student, she uncovered the influence of long-range inhibitory neurons in the healthy and epileptic hippocampus under the mentorship of Esther Krook-Magnuson. During her postdoctoral training, she sought to understand how the precise timing of inhibitory neuron spiking influences cognition in healthy and epileptic mice. To pursue this line of investigation, she developed and validated a novel open-source tool called PhaSER, which allows her to simultaneously manipulate and monitor inhibitory neuron spiking relative to ongoing brain activity, in particular to theta oscillations. Her transition to independence is supported by a Simons Foundation Collaboration on Plasticity and the Aging Brain Fellows-to-Faculty award, which will support her work investigating how small changes in neural activity that occur early in the aging process may lead to a cascade of hippocampal circuitry and function alterations, triggering age-related cognitive decline. Dr. Christenson Wick is highly involved in academic service, community engagement, teaching, and leadership initiatives and is the recipient of several awards in addition to her Simons Foundation Transition Award, including NIH Pre- and Post-doctoral NRSA Fellowships, an American Epilepsy Society Postdoctoral Fellowship, and Friedman Brain Institute Postdoc Innovator Award.