The University of California, San Diego today announced the creation of The Kavli Institute for Brain and Mind at UCSD, a new research center that crosses academic disciplines to explore the relationship of the brain’s cellular make-up and the resulting behaviors of the mind.

This Institute is funded through a $7.5 million endowment announced today by The Kavli Foundation of Oxnard, Calif. The Foundation also established neuroscience institutes at Yale University and Columbia University.

The UCSD Kavli Institute’s members will work together to address many of the central questions of the field, such as how genetics influences behavior, how brains repair themselves, the biochemical mechanisms of memory and the neural bases of learning, consciousness, memory and attention.

The Kavli Institute will harness the breadth of neuroscience and neurobiology expertise at UCSD and neighboring scientific institutes and utilize breakthroughs in new tools and methods of study. Ultimately, the Kavli Institute, a center without walls, will be comprised of researchers from more than 20 academic disciplines, including neuroscience, biology, cognitive science, psychology and medicine.

The Kavli Foundation is providing $4.5 million and Fred Kavli, founder and chairman of the Kavli Foundation, is providing $3 million to establish the Kavli Institute at UCSD. The gifts, payable by 2009 through the UC San Diego Foundation, will create an endowment that provides perpetual funds to the new institute.

“UCSD is enormously grateful to Fred Kavli and The Kavli Foundation for these generous gifts and their commitment to the interdisciplinary exploration of the brain and mind,” said Acting Chancellor Marsha A. Chandler. “The Brain and Mind initiative is a top priority for this campus and we expect that the research conducted through Kavli Institute auspices will lead to advances that will improve the quality of life for many people. Moreover, I look forward to the unique collaborations the UCSD Kavli Institute will forge across our campus, with neighboring research institutions, and with the other Kavli Institutes, as we seek new knowledge in the field.”

Nicholas Spitzer, professor of biology and former chair of the neurobiology section in the Division of Biological Sciences, and Jeffrey Elman, associate dean, Division of Social Sciences will be founding co-directors of the Kavli Institute.

“The brain is one of the most complicated physical systems we know. Anything we can do to explain how this piece of tissue gives rise to emotions, thoughts, beliefs, and desires opens up enormous possibilities,” said Elman. “The brain is so important that every bit of new knowledge about it can be of incredible value.”
“As we increase our understanding of how the brain and mind work, we will begin to see breakthroughs in medical treatments for physical and mental disorders, as well as a broad range of social applications addressing learning impairment, emotional trauma and social interactions such as consumer choice and aggression management,” said Spitzer. “It’s not unlike the way in which decoding the human genome provided the essential, basic information that will eventually lead to a long list of applied benefits.”

The activities of this Institute will include interdisciplinary training programs, seminars, international symposium, a faculty exchange program, shared data networks, graduate student research support, seed funding for non-traditional research, and vital infrastructure support.

The Kavli Institute will leverage the strength of UCSD’s neurosciences graduate program, ranked first in the nation by the National Research Council, and involve faculty from many campus departments, the School of Medicine and from a number of other La Jolla-based research institutions such as The Salk Institute for Biological Studies, The Scripps Research Institute, The Burnham Institute and the Neurosciences Institute. UCSD’s state-of-the-art resources, including the San Diego Supercomputer Center, the Center for Functional MRI, the California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology, the Institute for Neural Computation, the National Center for Microscopy and Imaging Research, and the university’s teaching hospitals, will all be engaged in the work of the Kavli Institute members.

The Kavli Foundation today announced the creation of seven new scientific research institutes at leading universities in the United States and Europe to address major challenges in the fields of cosmology, nanoscience and neuroscience. In addition to the Institutes at UCSD, Columbia and Yale, the other universities involved in today’s announcement are: Caltech, Cornell, University of Chicago, and Delft University of Technology in Holland. The Kavli Foundation has already established Institutes at Stanford and UC Santa Barbara.

“My goal in establishing these institutes is to support research at the frontiers of science,” said Kavli. “I feel that it is especially important to pursue the most far-reaching opportunities and challenges and to seek answers to the most fundamental unanswered questions. The Kavli Institutes will pursue science at the most astronomical scales-the universe; at the most infinitesimal scales---of atoms and molecules; and in the most complex of all things--- the human brain. I have selected these three areas of emphasis because I believe they provide the greatest opportunity for major scientific breakthroughs.”

The Kavli Foundation was established in December 2000 by its founder and benefactor, Fred Kavli. The Foundation’s mission is to advance science for the benefit of humanity and to promote increased public understanding and support for scientists and their work. The Foundation has selected three areas of basic research in which to focus its activities: cosmology, life sciences with emphasis on understanding the nature and evolution of life and the human being, and nanoscience with initial emphasis on bio-nanotechnology. In each case, the Foundation’s interest is to address the most fundamental unanswered scientific questions of our time. An international program of prizes, symposia, research institutes and endowed professorships is being established to further these goals.

The gifts from Fred Kavli and The Kavli Foundation contribute to the $1 billion fund-raising goal of The Campaign for UCSD: Imagine What’s Next. Campaign priorities include supporting students and faculty through scholarships, fellowships and endowed chairs; creating and expanding academic programs; funding research endeavors and health sciences advancements; and providing innovation funds and unrestricted support. To date, UCSD has raised $575.5 million; the campaign is scheduled to conclude in June 2007.