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Neuroscience Graduate Program

The NSP at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign is an interdisciplinary program of study and research leading to the doctoral degree.

We offer a rigorous yet flexible program designed to foster the growth of the student through research activities, close interactions with faculty, and exposure to top neuroscientists through our seminar series and attendance at professional meetings.

Neuroscience Program Events Calendar

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Neuroscience News

Nobel Prize-winning technology being studied at University of Illinois

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — This year’s Nobel Prize in Medicine was awarded to optogenetics researchers. It is a new field of study, and the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign is one of the few schools nationwide researching it.“Optogenetics is a light switch for a cell,” said Kai Zhang, a professor in...

NSP Faculty member, Xiaotang Lu, received the NIH Director's New Innovator Award for her work mapping connections within the brain.

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — Xiaotang Lu, a professor of chemistry at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, has received the National Institutes of Health Director’s New Innovator Award...

Cultivating Affective Resilience: Proof-of-Principle Evidence of Translational Benefits From a Novel Cognitive-Emotional Training Intervention

AbstractAvailable evidence highlights the importance of emotion regulation in psychological well-being. However, translation of the beneficial effects of ER from laboratory to real-life remains scarce. Here, we present proof-of-principle evidence from a novel cognitive-emotional...

Beckman’s newest seed project will expand existing AI models into a framework that analyzes neurological aging.

In its fourth year, the research seed grant program at the Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology will fund one research project beginning in 2026.Members of the team include, from left, Nien-Pei Tsai...

Honey bee larvae can't smell - and that's actually a good thing

BEESEarth.com (Telluride, Colo., July 16) — Gene Robinson, Illinois entomology professor and executive director and CEO of the Discovery Partners Institute, led a study seeking to understand if a young bee never has to find its own food, does it still need to smell the world around it? “Larval...

Artificial Intelligence: Enabling More Sustainable Labs

ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCETechnology Networks (with audio; Suffolk, England, May 6) — Jimeng Sun, a computer science professor at the U. of I., used training data from over 8,000 past trials to predict the outcome of more than 3,400 recent drug studies in a prediction model. “All this...

Faculty Spotlight

Circadian Biologist, Megan Mahoney

How would you describe your background? (I.E. where you are from? How did you first get interested in your area of research? Etc.) I always wanted to do biology. I always found that interesting, I took AP biology in high school and said, “This is what I want to major in.” Even though I went to two different undergrads, I was always a biology major. I guess I would say I say that my Ph.D. and post-docs were all in hormones and biological rhythms. I entered graduate school to do reproduction, but I had a lab that also did biological rhythms, which I knew nothing about. So that’s the area I’ve...

Alumni Spotlight

Neuroscience Alumn Daeyeol Lee named Bloomberg Distinguished Professor

Dr. Daeyeol Lee has been named a Bloomberg Distinguished Professor at the Johns Hopkins University. Lee graduated from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 1995 (MS in Biology) and 1995 (PhD in Neuroscience). Established by Michael Bloomberg, Lee will be among 50 professors from around the world named to these posts who are pioneering interdisciplinary fields.In the John Hopkins, "Hub," it notes Lee's widely acclaimed reputation as father of "neuroeconomics." Deayeol tries "to unify different methodologies and theories of various disciplines that strive to...

Publication Spotlight

Incorporating Functional Response Time Effects into a Signal Detection Theory Model

Abstract Signal detection theory (SDT; Tanner & Swets in Psychological Review 61:401-409, 1954) is a dominant modeling framework used for evaluating the accuracy of diagnostic systems that seek to distinguish signal from noise in psychology. Although the use of response time data in psychometric models has increased in recent years, the incorporation of response time data into SDT models remains a relatively underexplored approach to distinguishing signal from noise. Functional response time effects are hypothesized in SDT models, based on findings from other related psychometric models...

South Quad - McFarland Carillon Memorial Bell Tower

Land Acknowledgement

As a land-grant institution, the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign has a responsibility to acknowledge the historical context in which it exists. We are currently on the lands of the Peoria, Kaskaskia, Peankashaw, Wea, Miami, Mascoutin, Odawa, Sauk, Mesquaki, Kickapoo, Potawatomi, Ojibwe, and Chickasaw Nations. It is necessary for us to acknowledge these Native Nations and for us to work with them as we move forward as an institution with Native peoples at the core of our efforts.

More about the practice of land acknowledgements at the University of Illinois.