THE BOSTON UNIVERSITY CENTER FOR NEUROSCIENCE
The Center for Neuroscience is a university-wide initiative established to advance cutting edge interdisciplinary, collaborative research and education on the neural basis of behavior and cognition. We will pursue experimental and theoretical-computational approaches that span molecular, cellular, systems, behavioral, and cognitive levels of analysis. We aim to expand our understanding of fundamental mechanisms of brain function and to translate these advances into practical applications including treatment of neurologic and psychiatric disorders and development of new directions in educational practice.

In order to effectively address the complex and challenging problems in contemporary neuroscience, the Center will promote integrative, team-based research that builds on the expertise of individual scientists. The major research mission of the Center will be to foster the development of interdisciplinary projects in rapidly developing, high-risk-high-payoff topical areas of fundamental and translational neuroscience that include a cognitive or behavioral component as a main feature of the research focus. Each project will be composed as a working group of faculty and students engaged in interdisciplinary collaborations that bridge traditional departmental boundaries and research approaches and may include basic and /or clinical research. Successful working groups are expected to evolve into vibrant, self-sustaining research collectives whose external funding will be administered through the Center.

Our educational mission includes an enhanced graduate program and a new undergraduate program. A goal of the new graduate program will be to merge the current Program in Neuroscience, the Computational Neuroscience Program (in CNS) and Program in Biomedical Neuroscience, and seek to incorporate other neuroscience programs at Boston University under a single umbrella with a common set of core survey courses and multiple specialization tracks. A major objective of the Center will be to support graduate neuroscience students through research assistantships and teaching fellowships that augment existing and future training grant programs.

The undergraduate program under CAS will offer a rigorous course schedule that focuses on the cell and systems, behavioral and cognitive, and computational and theoretical neuroscience and will feature undergraduate research participation and prepare students for a variety of careers and graduate training in medicine and neuroscience.Visit the undergraduate course offering listing.

The founding Director of the Center and Chair of the Executive Committee is Howard Eichenbaum (Psychology) and the additional founding executive committee members are Domenic Ciraulo (Psychiatry), David Farb (Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics), Nancy Kopell (Mathematics and Statistics), Mark Moss (Anatomy and Neurobiology), and Barbara Shinn-Cunningham (Cognitive and Neural Systems).