Unraveling the brain
Inaugural scientific conference held at world’s only multidisciplinary brain research center
The world’s first and only multidisciplinary center for brain research – combining physicists, molecular biologists, geneticists and numerous other specialties – opened its three-day scientific inaugural conference on Monday at Hebrew University’s Suzanne and Charles Goodman Brain Sciences Building.
Part of the nine-year-old Edmond and Lily Safra Center for Brain Sciences on Jerusalem’s Givat Ram campus, the majestic new building is unlike any other building in the world, faced with aluminum depicting some of the million different neurons in mouse brains mapped by its scientists.
The facility is arranged as two parallel wings around a central courtyard. The upper levels house 28 highly flexible labs linked by social hubs, which are conceived to encourage interaction and the exchange of ideas between students and staff and makes them easily visible to colleagues.
The conference, attended by over 400 neuroscientists and students from Israel and around the world, was held in the 200-seat sunken auditorium, with hundreds more seats in nearby rooms for participants watching streaming video. Planted with citrus trees and a place for water to run along its length, the courtyard forms a quiet, reflective space and a cool microclimate shaded by a retractable roof. The whole building was planned to be environmentally friendly.
Some 300 researchers will work at the new center, including 90 doctoral students. Fifteen new students are chosen every year among 100 applicants.
All subjects are taught in English, as there are also foreign students from a variety of countries, including China and India, said Prof. Idan Segev, a world-renowned expert in computational neuroscience and former director of Hebrew University’s Interdisciplinary Center for Neural Computation. His research team uses computational and theoretical tools to study how nerve cells – the elementary microchips of the brain – compute and dynamically adapt to man’s ever-changing environment.
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