Rate My Professor Eric Horstick

Eric Horstick, Ph.D., is Associate Professor and Co-Associate Chair of Graduate Studies in the Department of Biology at West Virginia University. He holds an adjunct appointment in the Department of Neuroscience at the WVU School of Medicine. Horstick obtained his B.S. in Biology from Bloomsburg University (2001-2005) and Ph.D. in Molecular, Cellular, and Developmental Biology from the University of Michigan (2005-2012). He completed postdoctoral fellowships in Pediatric Neurology at the University of Michigan (2012-2013) and at the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD), National Institutes of Health (2013-2019). He established his independent laboratory at West Virginia University in 2019.

The Horstick Lab examines how environmental and sensory experiences shape neural circuits and animal behavior using zebrafish and other fish models as primary systems. Research employs genetic tools, advanced in vivo imaging techniques, and quantitative behavioral assays to uncover experience-dependent mechanisms of neural plasticity and their evolutionary conservation. Key publications include 'Stac3 is a component of the excitation–contraction coupling machinery and mutated in Native American myopathy' (Nature Communications, 2013), 'Direct activation of the Mauthner cell by electric field pulses drives ultra-rapid escape responses' (American Journal of Physiology-Heart and Circulatory Physiology, 2014), 'Increased functional protein expression using nucleotide sequence features enriched in highly expressed genes in zebrafish' (Nucleic Acids Research, 2015), 'High-precision registration between zebrafish brain atlases using symmetric diffeomorphic normalization' (GigaScience, 2017), 'Swimming into prominence: the zebrafish as a valuable tool for studying human myopathies and muscular dystrophies' (FEBS Journal, 2013), and 'Molecular and cellular determinants of motor asymmetry in zebrafish' (Nature Communications, 2020). Horstick's research has received funding from the National Eye Institute and other sources, supporting undergraduate research initiatives. He is actively involved in graduate education and currently accepting new graduate students in the Department of Biology.