About the Del Monte Institute for Neuroscience
Basic and translational neuroscience investigators span across more than a dozen departments and centers at the University. The Del Monte Institute fosters collaboration among these researchers through shared resources such as lab space, animal models of neurological diseases, and next generation core facilities.
Note from John J. Foxe, PhD, director of the Del Monte Institute for Neuroscience
Reducing the burden of neurological and neuropsychiatric disease in our society through the development of basic scientific knowledge and novel therapeutic approaches is the central purpose of the Del Monte Institute for Neuroscience. With more than 100 researchers across a dozen departments spanning the University and Medical Center, the Institute is in a position to foster collaboration and innovations between labs. Only through a fundamental understanding of the machinations of the brain can we hope to provide effective evidence-based therapies to those suffering from severe mental illnesses and neurological diseases. These efforts, coupled with the efforts of our Neuroscience Diversity Commission, are forging pathways for future scientists and transforming the culture of academia to be inclusive and equitable.
The Ernest J. Del Monte Institute for Neuroscience established on aspirations, with origins in the hard work and creative energies of a large body of individuals at the University of Rochester. All who recognized that the answers to the big questions in neuroscience were beyond the capabilities of any single scientist or lab and would require harnessing and coordinating the extraordinary wealth of talent in the field of neuroscience here in Rochester. It is now one of the nation’s leading neuroscience institutions and is a large part of defining this field of science.
As a neuroscientist, I am understandably biased. Still, surely there is nothing more intriguing, more exhilarating, more vexing than the study of the 1400 grams of complexity that inhabits the interior of our skulls. It is what makes us; what we are as sentient beings. It is the very organ by which we go about studying it.