Martina Krenzer, MD

I was born and raised in Germany and attended Philipps University medical school in Marburg. During this time, I also pursued clinical training at Leeds Medical School (UK) and the University of Zurich (Switzerland), where I discovered my passion for clinical psychiatry and neuroscience. For my dissertation, I developed one of the first mouse models of REM sleep behavior disorder at Harvard/BIDMC (Lu lab). Subsequently, I translated these insights to identify patients with early stages of neurodegenerative disorders during my residency training in psychiatry and neurology (Max-Planck-Institute of Psychiatry and Marburg University).

Fascinated by the possibility to study neuropsychiatric disorders at their earliest stages, I conducted further research in the Noonan lab at Yale. Over the last couple of years, I have mapped the spatiotemporal expression of autism risk genes during critical periods of cortical development using cellular and animal models. Most recently, my work has focused on identifying common pathomechanisms of autism spectrum disorder and seizures, a result of a close collaboration with Rebecca Muhle, a former Solnit resident.

My work has been recognized through awards and fellowships by the German Academic Scholarship Foundation, the German Research Foundation, the Boehringer Ingelheim Foundation, the German Sleep Society, the German Academic Exchange Service, and others.

In my free time, I enjoy mountain biking in the woods of Southern Connecticut and skiing in Vermont. As a counterbalance, I am a Zen practitioner, the parent of a most amiable cat, and a happy but rather unsuccessful gardener.