Michael F. Wells, PhD

I am an Assistant Professor of Human Genetics at the UCLA David Geffen School of Medicine.

I was born and raised in Columbus, OH and became the first person in my family to graduate from college in 2008 when I completed my undergraduate degree in Biological Sciences at the University of Notre Dame. I earned my PhD in Neurobiology from Duke University in 2015 under the mentorship of Dr. Guoping Feng, and in 2021, finished my postdoctoral training in the laboratory of Dr. Kevin Eggan at the Broad Institute and Harvard University. I launched my independent research program in September of that year at UCLA.

My research focuses on the biological factors that influence human fetal brain development, and the ways in which these processes lead to variation in human traits and disease. Early in my career, I generated and characterized multiple mouse models of neurodevelopmental disorders, including the popular Ptchd1 and Shank3 conditional knockouts. This work led to the discovery of defective subcortical circuitry underlying abnormal behavioral phenotypes, including hyperactivity and poor attention in the Ptchd1 knockout mice, and social interaction deficits in the Shank3 mutant mice. These mouse models are currently being used in the field for drug discovery.

As a K99/R00-funded postdoctoral fellow, I co-developed the in vitro human stem cell-based cell village platform with a team of experts from the laboratories of Drs. Steve McCarroll and Kevin Eggan. Using this system, which enables population genetics studies in a dish, we discovered how Zika virus infects human neural progenitor cells and identified genetic risk biomarkers that increase susceptibility to this microcephaly-causing mosquito-borne illness. My team at UCLA is building upon these technologies to investigate how genetic and environmental factors impact human brain development and risk for disorders like autism, intellectual disability, and schizophrenia.

My work has been published in numerous high-impact journals including Nature, Cell, and Cell Stem Cell, and has been funded by the National Institutes of Health, California Institute for Regenerative Medicine, Simons Foundation Autism Research Initiative (SFARI), and the Burroughs Wellcome Fund.  

I am also a passionate science advocate and communicator. I frequently meet with policymakers to push for increased federal research funding and served as a Society for Neuroscience Early Career Policy Ambassador in 2017. That same year, I co-founded the Wishart Group with Passion Pit frontman Michael Angelakos to help bridge the gap between scientists and artists. In 2020, I launched the COVID-19 National Science Volunteer Database, which grew to over 9,500 researchers willing to donate their time and advanced skills to the fight against the pandemic.

Outside of lab, I spend most of my time with my wife chasing our 4-year-old son around Los Angeles. I am an avid fan of UCLA basketball, stand-up at the Comedy Store, and Sunday morning beach runs in Santa Monica.