Won Chan Oh, PhD

Wonchan grew up in Korea, where he enjoyed baseball and science competitions. After serving for 2.5 years in the ROK Marine infantry and living in Ireland for a year, where he mastered Guinness(!), he resumed and finished his BS degree in biology at the Dongguk University (Seoul, Korea) in 2006 and later MS in Developmental Genetics in the laboratory of Dr. Joohong Ahnn at the Gwangju Institute of Science and Technology (GIST; Gwangju, Korea) in 2008. He then crossed the Pacific Ocean and received his PhD in Cellular and Developmental Biology, with a specific focus on Neuroscience, at the University of California, Davis in 2013. His PhD work in the laboratory of Dr. Karen Zito focused on the mechanisms of excitatory synaptic plasticity in the hippocampus. Following graduation, in 2014 he moved to Florida to join Dr. Hyung-Bae Kwon's laboratory at the Max Planck Florida Institute for Neuroscience, where he studied inhibitory synaptic and circuit dynamics in the cortex as a postdoctoral researcher. 

In May 2018, he moved to Colorado to establish his own laboratory in the Department of Pharmacology at the University of Colorado School of Medicine on the Anschutz Medical Campus. When he is not talking about synapses, he is probably imaging synapses on a rig or practicing new ways of talking to synapses or neurons by two-photon lasers. Outside of the lab, he enjoys traveling with his family including energetic Teddy, hiking, camping, taekwondo, skiing, and coaching his sons' baseball teams (and Colorado IPAs!)