The Department of Neurobiology has grown significantly over the past five years. The department currently has 19 tenure stream and 6 non-tenure stream faculty with substantial research strengths in neural development, circuit function, computation, cellular communication through receptors, channels and synapses and neurological and psychiatric diseases. Total research grant funding for the primary faculty exceeded $8.5 million dollars in FY 2003. According to NIH rankings for 2001-2002 among medical 'biology' departments, the Department of Neurobiology was ranked 6th nationally in the amount of grant funding received. Under the direction of Dr. Susan Amara, who arrived as Chair in October of 2003, the department looks forward to continued growth, expansion and innovation.

The department invests substantial time and energy in the education of medical and graduate students. The faculty are part of the first cross-campus Ph.D. training program, the Center for Neuroscience program, which includes 70 training faculty in the School of Medicine and the Faculty of Arts and Sciences. Neurobiology faculty serve as directors of four Medical School courses and participate as lecturers or PBL leaders in Human Body, Musculoskeletal Block, Clinical Correlations, Cell Structure and Function, Cellular Communication, and Medical Neuroscience. Graduate teaching in required core courses includes Foundations of Biomedical Sciences, Cell and Molecular Neurobiology and Systems Neurobiology, and a number of advanced graduate courses. The department faculty participate in a number of different graduate student-oriented journal clubs. A seminar series is held throughout the academic year and hosts prominent guests from other universities, faculty from the Pitt/Carnegie-Mellon community and our own postdoctoral fellows and faculty.

The department actively integrates research efforts with other programs in the School of Medicine, (Psychiatry, Pharmacology, Neurology, Neurosurgery) the School of Engineering and in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences (Mathematics, Physics, Neuroscience). There are 15 faculty members with secondary appointments in the department.

The department has substantial programmatic strengths in neural development, circuit and systems function, cellular communication through receptors, channels and synapses and neurological and psychiatric disease. Click here or see the Research Programs link to the left for more details.

Click here to see the schedule for the departmental seminar series.

For department members only, you can access your Neurobiology email account here