Ian Wickersham and co-PIs Robert Desimone (McGovern Institute, MIT), Li-Huei Tsai (Picower Institute, MIT), and Kay Tye (Picower Institute, MIT) have been awarded an NSF BRAIN EAGER grant! The project is to develop systems for “Cell-type-specific optogenetics in wild-type animals”.
The National Science Foundation (NSF) has awarded 36 Early Concept Grants for Exploratory Research (EAGER) to enable new technologies to better understand how complex behaviors emerge from the activity of brain circuits.
These awards will contribute to NSF’s growing portfolio of investments in support of President Obama’s BRAIN Initiative, a multi-agency research effort that seeks to accelerate the development of new neurotechnologies that promise to help researchers answer fundamental questions about how the brain works.
Each NSF EAGER award is for $300,000 over a two-year period. The researchers receiving the awards, many first-time NSF grantees, will develop a range of conceptual and physical tools, from real-time whole brain imaging, to new theories of neural networks, to next-generation optogenetics.
Most of the awarded projects involve interdisciplinary teams of investigators; these 36 awards will support 76 researchers with expertise that spans nearly all scientific and engineering fields of study represented at NSF. Three of the projects involve international collaborations…