Collaboration is at the heart of our story

The aim of building UCI’s new Behavioral Neuroscience Testing Core, required two components:

(1) space and (2) equipment.

Over $1M worth of behavioral neuroscience equipment has been purchased and delivered to UCI and committed by the purchasers (two faculty members: Shahrdad Lotfipour (SOM) and Michael Yassa (BioSci)), fellow and Director for the Center for Neurobiology of Learning and Memory, respectively.

The equipment acquired can be viewed here. These items allow for sophisticated testing of various aspects of rodent behavior and are instrumental for neuroscience faculty at UCI.

We are also capitalizing on a major opportunity to work with Dr. Jennifer Prescher (School of Physical Sciences), who has been allocated space and funding support for the instrumentation of a new optical imaging core that will take up ~600 sq. ft. of the UCI Biological Sciences III Building - Shell Space (~one-third of the 1800 sq. feet of available space for the UCI BTC). Acquiring the additional equipment of the Behavioral Core provided the incentive to renovate the entire Shell Space to develop the UCI BTC and the new optical imaging core.

Additional support has been acquired from Dr. Claire Lindsell (Director of the University Laboratory Animal Resources (ULAR)), the University of California, Irvine Office of Research (OoR, Vice Chancellor for Research Pramod Khargonekar), Center for Neurobiology of Learning and Memory, ULAR (Jeff Chau/Claire Lindsell), UCI School of Medicine (Vice Dean of Research Suzanne Sandmeyer/Dean Michael Stamos), the School of Biological Sciences (Dean Frank LaFerla) and Dr. Enrique J. Lavernia, UCI Provost and Executive Vice Chancellor.

Thus, through our rich collaborative efforts, we have been able to secure the space and equipment needed to make the UCI Behavioral Neuroscience Testing Core.