T&C Chen Center for Systems Neuroscience

The T&C Chen Center for Systems Neuroscience, directed by Doris Tsao, professor of biology and a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator— is addressing the challenge of understanding how a large group of neurons firing in concert gives rise to cognition. The Caltech researchers working in this center explore the neural circuits and computations that underlie perception, thought, emotion, memory, decision making, and behavior.

Center scientists explore diverse systems including flies, fish, mice, monkeys, and humans. They tackle questions ranging from clarifying the fundamental design principles of the brain (Why do we sleep? How do we know when we are thirsty? Why do we experience emotions? How do we perceive objects?) to the development and evolution of brains (What factors are necessary to build a synthetic brain? How did symbiosis evolve?) to the creation of new tools to study the brain (How can non-invasively and focally perturb brain activity? Can we build a lower-power 2P microscope using an entangled photon source?).

A core mission of the Chen Center for Systems Neuroscience is to provide seed funding for Caltech faculty pursuing innovative, collaborative projects interrogating neural systems that would not be funded by traditional funding sources because the project would be deemed too risky and lacking in preliminary data.

Seed Research Projects funded by the Chen Center for Systems Neuroscience

The Center also funds the Chen Graduate Innovator Award, a program that awards each graduate student team 10K towards a project conceived and driven by the students that is not an obvious extension of other research in their lab. The goal of the program is to encourage students to think creatively and independently as early as possible.

Graduate Innovator Projects funded by the Chen Center for Systems Neuroscience

Scientists affiliated with the Chen Center for Systems Neuroscience