Kjesten Wiig
New Zealand scientist
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ToursExplore Lably’s 3D toursWiig spent 20 years as a neuroscientist in the United States, playing a key part in launching a bio-tech lab to develop memory loss drugs. She has over 23 patents to her name.
Wiig has also held senior positions at New Zealand's Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment and was a key contributor to the creation of the New Zealand Space Agency.
Early life and education
Wiig was born in Dunedin, New Zealand. She received a Bachelor of Arts with Honours in Psychology in 1990 and a PhD in Neuroscience in 1994, both from the University of Otago. In 1994, Wiig moved to the US to do a Postdoctoral Fellowship in the Department of Neuroscience at Brown University.
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Career
Wiig and her colleagues set up Sention Inc in 2000, a company that spun-out from her postdoctoral research at Brown University. As the associate director of Neuropharmacology, she designed and led preclinical programmes across multiple disease areas including memory loss and cognitive impairment in multiple sclerosis, Fragile X and autism. She played a key role in protecting intellectual property, securing angel and venture capital funding, navigating FDA drug approval processes, and advancing drug candidates to human trials. Sention Inc secured almost US$40 million of corporate and government funding.
Wiig returned to academia in 2005 as an adjunct professor at Brown University where she taught graduate-level cognitive neuroscience classes. Simultaneously, she was a founding member of Galenea, a spin-out company from MIT, where she worked as the Director of Behavioral Neuropharmacology. She was responsible for overseeing the testing of preclinical drug compounds for several indication areas including schizophrenia, Huntington's disease and obesity. She played a role in shaping the company's intellectual property strategy and business development efforts, while managing collaborations with universities, contract research organisations and pharmaceutical companies.
In 2012, Wiig moved back to New Zealand and worked for the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment. Here, she managed a commercialisation investment portfolio and went on to become the Director of Innovative Partnerships. Wiig was a contributor to the creation of the New Zealand Space Agency which encouraged the growth of domestic companies like Rocket Lab and positioned New Zealand as the location of choice for the emerging unmanned aviation and aerospace sector.
In January 2022 Wiig started working at the Malaghan Institute of Medical Research as the Director of Strategic Partnerships before being appointed as the deputy director of the institute in March 2024 and Director as of January 2025
She has been involved in establishing international research collaborations and working to bring New Zealand's first CAR T-cell cancer immunotherapy into the national healthcare system pending the completion of successful clinical trials.
She was the executive director of the Vaccine Alliance Aotearoa New Zealand—Ohu Kaupare Huaketo, a partnership of several New Zealand-based research organisations set up as part of the government's COVID-19 vaccine strategy to create vaccines in New Zealand.
Wiig is also co-director of New Zealand's RNA Development Platform and adjunct professor at the Ferrier Research Institute.
Honours and awards
- BioTechNZ Hall of Fame (2023)