Kavli Institute for Brain and Mind Celebrates Inauguration

By Heather Holliday I November 8, 2004

Listening to opening remarks from Nick Spitzer, co-director of The Kavli Institute for Brain and Mind, at the institute's inauguration celebration. Left to right: David Auston, The Kavli Foundation president; Marye Anne Fox, UCSD chancellor; Fred Kavli, founder and chairman of the Board of The Kavli Foundation; and Jeff Elman, co-director, The Kavli Institute for Brain and Mind.

Scientists are on the road to solving the mind’s biggest mysteries, declared the namesake of the newly founded Kavli Institute for Brain and Mind at a ceremony yesterday to inaugurate the new institute.

Fred Kavli, who donated $7.5 million to establish the institute in March, encouraged scientists and other scholars to reach for answers to the big questions still left unanswered.

“The brain and mind hold the most complex and baffling secrets of nature, and we only have one tool to investigate it – that is, the brain and mind,” Kavli said. “It must investigate itself. And I know you will put it to the ultimate test.”

The new research center was founded earlier this year with the goal of bringing together researchers from the many leading laboratories and institutions in the San Diego region. The mandate is to cross academic disciplines by engaging scientists from more than 20 different scholarly departments and perspectives.

Nick Spitzer, co-director of The Kavli Institute for Brain and Mind (left), chatted with Chancellor Marye Anne Fox (middle) and Fred Kavli, founder and chairman of the Board of The Kavli Foundation (right), during The Kavli Institute for Brain and Mind's inauguration celebration.

“We have a campus-wide commitment to interdisciplinary work and the Kavli Institute is a superb example of crossing departmental and institutional lines,” said UCSD Chancellor Marye Anne Fox.

The Kavli Institute leverages UCSD’s neurosciences graduate program, incorporates faculty from the School of Medicine and other campus departments, and relies upon resources such as the San Diego Supercomputer Center, the Center for Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging, and the California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology. Other La Jolla-based research institutions also will be involved, including the Salk Institute for Biological Studies, The Scripps Research Institute and The Neurosciences Institute.