M E M O R A N D U M

To: Malcolm Gillis, President
Eugene Levy, Provost
Jordan Konisky, Vice Provost for Research & Graduate Studies
Robert Stein, Dean of Social Sciences
From: James Pomerantz, Director of Neurosciences
Re: Annual Report of Center for Neuroscience
Date: December 22, 2000

This Annual Report for the Center for Neuroscience was prepared at the request of Dean Stein and follows the format outlined in the June 15, 1997 memorandum to Institute and Center Directors. As noted in last year’s report, and as remains true today, the Center for Neuroscience is not yet fully in existence: it has no physical presence or facilities, no staff, no governing or advisory boards, and no official members. I am pleased to say, however, that it is progressing on a good trajectory toward becoming a full-fledged center. The components that were put rapidly into place last year remain in place. They have been augmented and have begun to mature and take on a more permanent shape. These components include our graduate curriculum in neuroscience, which has expanded in offerings and in enrollments this year; a collaboration with Baylor College of Medicine; a group of 14 faculty from four Rice divisions who have participated in the program’s development; an fundraising program for a neuroimaging facility (the projected centerpiece of the Center) that received a major gift this year; a active joint speaker series with Baylor; and a now-planned De Lange Conference on Neuroscience, again jointly sponsored by Baylor, to be held at Rice on March 5-6, 2001. In addition, we have expanded our collaborations in research to move toward a formal agreement with M. D. Anderson Cancer Center to expand greatly our access to neuroimaging facilities, a move that will improve our position in competing for external funding.

Center for Neuroscience Annual Report 2000
Rice University
Executive Summary
December, 2000

The Rice University Center for Neuroscience has continued on the foundation begun in Fall, 1999 and is progressively moving toward the goal of becoming a fully functioning operation in the tradition of Rice’s best centers. The highlights for this year include:

· The expansion of the neuroscience curriculum through the development of new Rice-based and Baylor College of Medicine-based courses and the expansion of Rice enrollments in those courses.

· The expansion of a successful joint colloquium series with Baylor College of Medicine.

· The receipt of a major gift from the Albert and Margaret Alkek Foundation, followed by a major lecture and dinner to honor the Alkeks for their generosity.

· The planning for the March 5 - 6, 2001 De Lange Conference, co-hosted by Rice and Baylor College of Medicine, which will bring the world’s leading researchers to Rice and result in a published volume of original papers (a separate report will be prepared on this).

· The mounting of a Rice School of Continuing Studies course on Neuroscience this winter that will be keyed to the De Lange Conference.

· The creation of a bridging plan to get Rice-based fMRI research underway quickly through our entering into a partnership with MD Anderson Cancer Center and through the hiring of an fMRI technician (now underway).

· Accelerated work with faculty and administrators of other institutions in the Texas Medical Center (including UT Health Sciences Center Houston) to expand our collaborative teaching and research efforts in neuroscience.

· Trips by Rice faculty to other institutions (including Massachusetts General Hospital, Washington University in St. Louis, and others) doing fMRI research to consult and receive advice on our planning.

· Ongoing work with the newly appointed Deans of the International University Bremen to advise them on their pending neuroscience and cognitive science ventures and to develop plans for long-term collaboration with Rice.

· Ongoing work with funding from NSF and Rice to expand Rice’s neuroscience presence on the web through expanded video materials and through the creation of a web-based electronic textbook in behavioral neuroscience.

Regarding challenges facing the center, we have yet to finalize our interim plans for getting fMRI research underway. We hope to complete this step within the next two months, however. This step is essential to our aspirations for competing for federally funded research grants, either on our own or in collaboration with Baylor or other institutions in the TMC. Other challenges include the incorporation of those other institutions into our research and educational programs; resolving nagging infrastructure and communications issues between Rice and Baylor (involving the Registrars’ offices, and involving shuttle bus service and parking); and regaining help from Rice’s Office of Development to replace the services of Frances Jeter (who has left Rice, in turn leaving the Center without visible assistance in our efforts to secure additional major gifts).

In summary, this has been an active and fruitful year. Although the Center for Neuroscience at Rice is not yet a fully operational center in that it lacks many of the elements of mature centers (such as ongoing external support, a budget, and a physical presence), we appear to be a on good trajectory to accomplish those goals in a timely fashion.

Center for Neuroscience
Rice University
Annual Report, December, 2000

A. Strategic Goals

Mission
Long Range Goals
Plans for formal Long Range Plan
How goals relate to goals of university
Anticipated major changes in Center
Use of visiting committees

B. Research

Summary of key areas and specializations
New activities and opportunities
Interdisciplinary activities
Collaborative and outreach activities of Center
Intellectual Property and Technology Transfer

C. Educational Impact

Impact on educational programs at Rice
Numbers of graduate students involved
Research opportunities for undergraduates

D. Faculty and Staff

Identify involved faculty and guidelines for participation
Awards, prizes received
Staff assignments
Initiatives to increase diversity (women and minorities)

E. Financial matters

Summarize all financial support, restricted and unrestricted, internal and external
Restricted funds usage last year
Identify and over-runs
Describe current and future fundraising efforts

F. Other

Necessary Improvements in facilities
Other needs and where responsibility lies for resolving them

G. Appendix I

H. Appendix II.

Center for Neuroscience

Annual Report 2000

December, 2000

A. Strategic Goals

Mission

The mission of the Center for Neuroscience is to promote research and education in the neurosciences, broadly construed, by advancing our efforts at Rice and by coupling them with the strengths of neighboring institutions in the Texas Medical Center.

Long Range Goals

The long range goals, as well as more immediate goals, have been articulated in the primary planning document for the neurosciences initiative, entitled Neuroscience at Rice. (This original planning document, dated July 12, 1999, remainss available on the web at www.ruf.rice.edu/~neurosci/proposal5.htm). On the educational front, our goals include bolstering our existing PhD programs in several areas with training in basic neuroscience. At present, we plan to continue issuing only those degrees Rice has offered in the past, but in the longer term we will consider adding a Certificate Program in Neuroscience and perhaps even a PhD in neuroscience itself. The graduate curriculum now established in neuroscience will be (and already is) available to selected Rice undergraduates, but we have no immediate aspirations of moving toward an undergraduate degree program in neurosciences.

On the research front, our goal is to facilitate research across the neurosciences, but particularly in areas in which Rice has or intends to build faculty strength. Rice has one area, cognitive neuroscience, that currently has the greatest strength in numbers of faculty (5 - 6), and there is support in key areas at Rice for building in another area, computational neuroscience, where Rice currently does not have as many faculty. These two areas share the advantageous feature that Baylor College of Medicine, our principal collaborator at present, neither has nor intends to build major strength in these specialties. Thus, if Rice focuses its resources in these two areas, it will provide complementary strength to areas that Baylor already has well represented (including cellular, molecular, developmental, and systems neuroscience). In addition, Rice has substantial and growing strength in digital signal processing, an area central to the neuroimaging revolution that has transformed neuroscience in the past decade. To serve all these ends, we aspire to move jointly with Baylor to create a neuroimaging facility complete with capabilities for functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to support both the research and graduate training aspirations of our programs.

The timeline for achieving these goals is still evolving, but the current version including benchmarks and underlying assumptions was originally advanced in the above-mentioned planning document, Neuroscience at Rice. These goals, and the progress we have made toward completing them, will be detailed below.

Plans for developing formal Long Range Plan

As just noted, a preliminary long-range plan, including a timeline, benchmarks, and assumptions, are included in the planning document Neuroscience at Rice. Over the next year, the faculty and I hope to make significant progress toward complete a formal Center for Neuroscience structure that would include a more detailed long-range plan. Following the model of other successful centers at Rice, a governance structure be established for the Center at an appropriate time, and that eventual governing body, perhaps augmented by a visiting committee, participate in the creation of this detailed long-range plan.

How the Center’s goals relate to goals of the University

The goals of the Center for Neuroscience are fully congruent with the overall goals of Rice University. The focus of the Center is excellence in research and education in the neurosciences. Rice is well known for its pursuits in areas that are both current and are interdisciplinary, and those two qualities describe neuroscience well. Rice is also eager to augment its ties with the Texas Medical Center, and neuroscience is a natural area in which to pursue that goal.

Anticipated major changes in Center

The main changes envisaged involve building out the program as defined in the planning document. We have come far, but most of the key work has yet to be done. Perhaps the most significant change in the Center, which is under discussion and certainly not yet policy, is to broaden the base of the Center’s institutional collaborations to include other institutions in the Texas Medical Center and nearby, especially the University of Texas Health Science Center - Houston, and the M. D. Anderson Cancer Center.

Use of visiting committees

Visiting committees would be of great value to the Center. The key question is at what point they should be engaged. At present, there is not much in place for a visiting committee to evaluate, but a committee could nonetheless advise us on our evolving plans and on key opportunities they perceive. During the past year, at least one of the main departments participating in the Center, Psychology, was scheduled for an external review. That review has been postponed, but if it is conducting in the coming year, perhaps we can gain feedback on our plans during that process. Otherwise, I would propose the creation of a visiting committee to come to Rice in the next year or so.

B. Research

Summary of key areas and specializations

The key areas and specializations for neuroscience research at Rice are defined primarily by the sum of the efforts of the individual faculty members. Once the Center becomes formally established and serves as a conduit for sponsored research, new clusters for collaborative research are likely to emerge and mature. That said, existing specialties at Rice include:

· Cognitive Neuroscience (including language, memory, attention, motor behavior, reasoning, and perception), concentrated in Psychology and Linguistics, with additional involvement in Philosophy and Music.

· Digital Signal Processing, with efforts concentrated in Electrical and Computer Engineering.

· Computational Neuroscience (including artificial intelligence), concentrated in Computer Science.

· Molecular and Cellular Neuroscience (including ion channel activity and sensory neurophysiology), in Biochemistry and Cell Biology

· Bioengineering (including models of single neurons), in Electrical and Computer Engineering

The Center’s primary ongoing activities for the year 2000 included the following:

1. conducted more than a half-dozen of graduate courses in neuroscience from Baylor College of Medicine

2. operated an ongoing joint speaker series with Baylor

3. created or sustained several faculty collaborations with TMC faculty, including those involving those of Profs. Randi Martin, Don Johnson, Geoffrey Potts, and Rob Nowak.

4. continued a collaborative effort with Baylor to raise funds for creating a neuroimaging facility

5. conducted collaborative planning, with Baylor, for the 4^{th De Lange Conference at Rice, on neuroscience, scheduled for the academic year 2000-2001.}

6. made significant progress of a recently-funded grant proposal to the NSF for creating a web-based textbook in behavioral neuroscience

Most of the neuroscience activities at Rice are posted on Rice’s public Neurosciences website at ^{www.ruf.rice.edu/~neurosci/ <http://www.ruf.rice.edu/~neurosci/>, a public site that is the main conduit of information for students and faculty alike. (Note that this site is distinct from the more private site mentioned above that holds the Neurosciences at Rice planning document.)}

New activities and opportunities

A summary of the important activities and advances of the current year include the following:

1. The holding of the first Alkek Lecture in Neuroscience, to thank the Alkek Foundation for their gift establishing the Alkek Fund in Neuroscience at Rice.

2. The bulk of the planning of the De Lange Conference, schedule for March 5 - 6, 2001 at Rice University, was done in 2000. The premier conference at Rice, this fourth De Lange Conference will feature almost 20 of the world’s most distinguished neuroscientists as speakers and will result in both a live webcast and a book of proceedings. It will showcase Rice’s efforts in neuroscience and our collaboration with Baylor, the conference’s co-sponsor.

3. The designing and planning for a Rice Continuing Studies course in neuroscience, taught mainly by faculty involved in Center activities and keyed explicitly into the De Lange Conference.

4. Our curriculum was expanded to include new courses (such as Sensory Transduction and the forthcoming Cognitive Neuroscience). Also, videotapes of entire classes in neuroscience were made available to Rice students over the web, a first for Rice University in the use of this technology. (This taping was done in part because Rice’s and Baylor’s academic calendars do not agree and so Rice students would otherwise have missed some Baylor lectures. The videotaping, however, has other great advantages and should be pursued to the maximum in my opinion.)

5. The creating of a spending plan for the early portions of the Alkek gift.

6. The preliminary establishment of a cooperative agreement with M.D. Anderson Cancer Center whereby Rice spends a portion of the Alkek Fund in Neuroscience to support a technician to assist in operating M. D. Anderson’s fMRI facility, in exchange for which Rice researchers gain access to time on their magnets. This is a bridging plan to help Rice faculty gain research experience in fMRI research prior to the acquisition of our own facility. At this time we have begun interviews for the technician position described in the Alkek Fund spending plan.

7. Visits by Rice faculty to other neuroimaging centers, including Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, and Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, for consultation on optimal design of fMRI research facilities.

8. Creation of original content for Rice’s NSF-funded web-based text in Behavioral Neuroscience.

Performance Benchmarks

Reviewing the benchmarks outlined in Neuroscience at Rice, Section 10, we can see that some of them have been completed, while some others are in progress or have been modified. Below, all 18 benchmarks are listed, each followed by its current status:

1. Gain official Rice endorsement for launching neuroscience initiative, as outlined in this proposal (target date: Spring, 99) DONE IN 1999.

2. Launch the Neurosciences at Rice Initiative by establishing a Center, appointing a Director, clarifying the organizational structure, budget, timetable, and assessment plan (Summer, 99) PARTIALLY DONE IN 1999; FORMAL DOCUMENTS AND BUDGET STILL PENDING

3. Respond to Baylor College of Medicine’s offer to teach its nine core neuroscience courses on the Rice campus (Spring, 99). Note: this will require that Rice ensure respectable enrollments of Rice students in these courses. We may need to phase in the nine over a period of year or two. DONE IN 1999, WITH FURTHER COURSES ADDED IN 2000.

4. Grant full Rice credit for BCM courses and have them fulfill Rice departmental and divisional requirements on an equal basis with native Rice courses, to ensure strong enrollments (Summer, 99) PARTIALLY DONE; CREDIT GRANTED IN SOME PROGRAMS; NO EVIDENCE THAT THIS IS NEEDED IN OTHER PROGRAMS, BUT FUTURE ACTION MAY BE REQUIRED.

5. Review the graduate curriculum across the disciplines in neuroscience at Rice, with an eye toward consolidation and integration with BCM’s offerings (Fall, 99) ONGOING IN 2000.

6. Review and complete plans for hiring new neuroscience faculty at Rice (Fall, 99) PENDING; SOME FACULTY WERE HIRED IN 1999, BUT NO APPOINTMENTS WERE MADE IN 2000.

7. Complete a formal agreement with BCM covering the major elements of our joint venture, including joint fundraising strategies (Fall, 99) DONE IN 1999 BUT MAY NEED TO BE REVISED IN 2001.

8. Officially launch the joint Rice - BCM neuroscience initiative (Fall, 99). Design a graduate-level Certificate Program in Neuroscience for students (Fall, 99) PENDING.

9. Review and revamp graduate recruitment and admissions strategy in participating departments, joint with BCM (Fall, 99) PENDING

10. Initiate a speaker series joint with BCM (Fall, 99) ONGOING IN 1999 AND 2000; MAY NEED EXPANSION IN 2001.

11. Establish a team of distinguished outside experts (as a precursor to a visiting committee) to come to the Rice campus to advise, speak, and teach (Fall, 99) PENDING; MAY BE APPROPRIATE FOR 2002.

12. Explore with BCM the incorporation of researchers from other institutions into our joint neuroscience venture (Fall, 99) PENDING BUT BECOMING MORE PRESSING.

13. Initiate formal discussion on shared research facilities, between Rice and BCM. (Spring, 00) INITIATED BUT NOT COMPLETE.

14. Submit a joint Rice-BCM training grant application (Summer, 00). PENDING STRENGTHENING OF RICE’S AND BAYLOR’S TRACK RECORDS IN fMRI RESEARCH.

15. Open the first phase of the shared research facility, which would focus on neuroimaging and include a research-dedicated MRI machine to be used jointly by Baylor, Rice, and any other participating institutions (Summer 01) PENDING. BECAUSE OF SLOW PROGRESS IN FUNDRAISING, WE ARE MOVING TOWARD AN INTERIM SOLUTION IN WHICH OUR SCANNING IS DONE AT M.D. ANDERSON.

16. Develop a recommendation, positive or negative, on establishing a full PhD program in neuroscience, joint with Baylor (Summer, 01). PENDING

17. Receive externally funded training grant (Summer, 02). Note: this allows for a rejection on our first submission, a likely outcome for a new venture. PENDING

18. Submit external funding proposals to other foundations (Summer, 01 and continuing) DISCUSSIONS INITIATED

One new opportunity arose following the drafting of these goals, namely a proposed collaboration with International University Breman. That new institution in Germany, the creation of which is being facilitated by Rice University, intends to focus on only four research areas, one of which is neuroscience. In addition, one of its curriculum concentrations will be Cognitive Science. In the last 12 months I have met on several occasions with Ronny Wells, Tom Hochstettler, and others regarding a requested involvement of the Center for Neuroscience in this effort. In the past few months I have met on the Rice campus with Prof. Gerhard Haerendel (International University Bremen’s Dean of Engineering) and Prof. Max Kasse (IUB’s VP and Dean of Humanities) to assist in their development of research and curricular program. Ronny Wells has asked me to visit Breman sometime during the year 2001. Given IUB’s existing support by the German manufacturer Siemens, one of the world’s two largest producers of neuroimaging facilities, this linkage could prove valuable to Rice.

Interdisciplinary activities

Neuroscience itself is among the most interdisciplinary of areas, so it is no surprise that many of the activities in neuroscience at Rice are interdisciplinary. In fact, only a few are not (e.g., selected research programs unique to a single principal investigator).

Collaborative and outreach activities of Center

First, the curricular component of the neurosciences effort is fully collaborative with Baylor College of Medicine, and in particular with its Division of Neurosciences. The key players in this effort to date have been Dr. James Patrick (Professor and Head of the Division of Neuroscience and Vice President for Research at Baylor) and Dr. Dan Johnston (Professor and Director of the Graduate Program in Neuroscience at Baylor). Second, the research component involves a number of ongoing collaborations with faculty in the Texas Medical Center. These are summarized in a Rice publication appearing this year entitled “Partners across Main Street: Education and Research in Biomedicine and Bioscience.”

The Center’s primary involvement in outreach activities comes in two forms. First is the upcoming De Lange Conference (March 5 - 6, 2001), which should bring as many as 300 outsiders to the Rice campus. Second, Rice’s School of Continuing Studies has put together a neuroscience course specifically keyed to the De Lange Conference, with the students enrolled in that course also attending a portion of the Conference itself. In addition, the Center provided visible assistance to other Rice outreach efforts in 2000, including the Friends of Fondren featured event of the year, a lecture by neuroscientists Antonio Damasio.

Intellectual Property and Technology Transfer

No activity here as yet.

C. Educational Impact

Impact on educational programs at Rice

In only 18 months time, we have seen the introduction of a new curriculum in neuroscience, driven primarily by the infusion of nine new graduate courses from Baylor College of Medicine. We intend to complement this Baylor contribution with a redesign and expansion of Rice’s neuroscience offerings.

In my experience, it is rare for a program to have had such a large and rapid positive impact on education at any institution as this one has had. On behalf of Rice, the Center extends its thanks to the following 14 Baylor professors who have taught in this program, without remuneration from Rice, often in classrooms here at Rice and often to classes consisting more of Baylor students than Rice students:

Ronald Fisher (Functional Neuroanatomy)

Anne Anderson (Functional Neuroanatomy)

Chong Lee (Functional Neuroanatomy)

Michael Crair (Systems Neuroscience and Molecular Neuroscience)

John Maunsell (Systems Neuroscience)

David Sparks (Systems Neuroscience)

Daniel Johnston (Cellular Neurophysiology)

Samuel Wu (Cellular Neurophysiology)

Ruth Anne Eatock (Sensory Transduction)

Peter Saggau (Optical Imaging)

David Sweatt (Molecular Neuroscience)

Hugo Bellen (Molecular Neuroscience)

Huda Zoghbi (Molecular Neuroscience)

Ron Davis (Molecular Neuroscience)

I am working with Prof. Dan Johnston at Baylor to monitor the program and in particular to ensure that Rice students are properly prepared to enter the Baylor courses. Some of the Baylor neuroscience courses presume an extensive background in biochemistry that many Rice students in Psychology or other disciplines typically do not have. This resulted in a few inappropriately placed students during our initial year of course offerings. This problem seems to have lessened in our second year, and most Rice students have done very well in the Baylor courses, earning a median grade falling between an A and an A-.

We continue to experience headaches that are attributable to infrastructure shortcomings, red tape, and added complexities such as Baylor’s courses being timed to a different academic calendar than Rice’s. Although individually these problems are mere minor annoyances, collectively they threaten the health of our collaboration, and so efforts are underway to identify and rectify these wherever possible.

Numbers of graduate students involved

For the calendar year 2000, exactly 18 students signed up for and completed Baylor-taught neurosciences classes (all of which bear a NEUR designation at Rice but that are also Baylor courses in their own right). Of these 18, there was an exact 9/9 split between graduate and undergraduate students. Although I do not have exact information on the background of these students, they come from a variety of doctoral programs and majors, some in the sciences and engineering, some in social sciences, and at least one in humanities.

Research opportunities for undergraduates

As just noted, there were 9 Rice undergraduates who enrolled in our NEUR classes this spring. Some of these students are interested in pursuing research in neuroscience either at Rice or at Baylor. Some in fact are already doing so, but we anticipate an increase as Rice’s neuroscience efforts are ramped up. Unfortunately, the two undergraduate student associations in neuroscience that were created at Rice last year vanished over the summer of 2000, the frequent fate of student organizations whose leaders graduate and move on.

D. Faculty and Staff

Identify involved faculty and guidelines for participation

At present we have not established guidelines; instead we have publicized our plans and invited full faculty participation. We did, however, make one faculty appointment during 2000, namely the appointment of Michael Hammond, Dean of Rice’s Shepherd School of Music, as a Fellow in the Center for Neuroscience.

Awards, prizes received

The Rice faculty involved in neuroscience have continued their often-successful efforts at securing funding awards and prizes; the fruits of those efforts will be reflected in their individual annual reports. We have made no effort to have faculty run their individual proposals through the Center rather than through their host departments. There has been, however, one successful effort that was explicitly linked to the Center for Neuroscience. It was funded last year at this time and noted in last year’s report, but work on this project has been underway since:

Lane, D., Pomerantz, J. R., Martin, R., Osherson, D., & Potts, G. A. “A Web-Based Multimedia Textbook in Behavioral Neuroscience.” A proof-of-concept proposal approved and funded by the National Science Foundation, December, 1999, $74,931; 18 month duration.

Staff assignments

There are no dedicated staff, per se, as yet for this Center. All staff duties have been handled by me and by the staffs of the Psychology Department, the Dean of Social Science’s office, and the Development Office. Thanks this year go especially to the following Rice staff members: Frances Jeter, Jackie Ehlers, Eva Azzam, and to Cindy Herring and Kathleen Minadeo Johnson (who put in a major effort on the highly successful Alkek Lecture). Most of the ongoing staff support efforts came from Frances Jeter and Jackie Ehlers. This makes it doubly regrettable that both experienced significant illnesses that kept them away from Rice during large stretches of the current calendar year. Compounding the problem, Frances Jeter has now left Rice permanently. The result is that the slack has been picked up by others, including Cindy Herring and myself on the day-to-day operation of Center activities.

Initiatives to increase diversity (women and minorities)

We have not yet reached the stage of making appointments, but when we do initiate hiring of faculty and staff and the recruitment of students, we will pay particular attention to women and minority candidates. The former are represented in significant numbers among the current faculty and student bodies, as well as among the list of invited speakers.

E. Financial matters

Summarize all financial support, restricted and unrestricted, internal and external

The Neuroscience at Rice initiative has operated to date without a formal budget. Beyond the key support of individual faculty who have received funding from Rice, we have received funds for several specific projects:

1. Expenditure of support of $10K from Jordan Konisky’s office for support of new graduate recruitment efforts for neuroscience and psychology. We used these funds to develop a web-based program highlighting the strengths of the neuroscience program at Rice and our links with the Texas Medical Center. This work is still in progress, but our main progress was to develop the first web-based videos of Rice faculty describing their research programs, their labs, and the courses they teach. We have learned many lessons in this effort, including the difficulty of producing high quality videos viewable through web browers; it is not as simple as it seems. Nonetheless, now that we have acquired the necessary hardware and software, acquired a server capable of supporting these videos, and mastered the technical aspects of the program, we will be expanding this effort in the coming year to include all faculty linked to the neuroscience effort at Rice.

2. Expenditure of support of $30 - 50K from Tony Gorry’s office to support technology in teaching in the neuroscience graduate (and undergraduate) program. We have used and will continue to use these funds to develop content material and delivery systems, especially

3. Last year we received $7K from Dean Stein’s office for purchasing a computer projector system to meet the needs of Baylor instructors who are teaching Rice courses pro bono. This system has been in continual use and has made a noticeable contribution to our program.

4. This year we received the first installment of the $500K pledge from the Alkek Foundation toward the Alkek Fund in Neuroscience. To accelerate our plans moving forward to a acquire our own neuroimaging (fMRI) center, in May 2000 I prepared a spending plan for this first installment, a plan that was approved by Dean Stein and that has begun to be implemented. A copy is attached in the Appendix II (Section H.)

In addition, the Center has assisted other Rice faculty members in their efforts to secure external funding, through letters of endorsement and the like. One example of this is the VIGRE program that Rice’s Mathematics faculty are pursuing on vertical integration of research and education.

The new faculty members hired recently in neuroscience-related areas (Osherson, Potts, Ro, Pomerantz, and Nowak) have all received start-up funding, some of which will be ongoing, that provides important support for the program.

Finally, there have been numerous additional sources of support for the program, most notably the shuttle bus service linking the Rice and Baylor campuses. The Department of Psychology has donated time, supplies, and services in support of the program from its inception.

Restricted funds usage last year

N/A

Identify any over-runs

N/A

Describe current and future fundraising efforts

Gifts from foundations.

Our primary successful effort has been to secure funding for a neuroimaging facility from the Alkek Foundation. Our future efforts will build on this initial success and will likely involve approaches to other local organizations and to national foundations such as the Dana and McDonnell Foundations. We have been hampered in these efforts to some degree by the illness and then departure from Rice of the primary development officer supporting our effort, Frances Jeter. We all hope that her replacement will begin work soon to get this effort back on the track. I should note that this fundraising effort is intended to be conducted jointly with Baylor College of Medicine, but to date Baylor has raised no funds. It is not clear whether Baylor has prepared or submitted any proposals either, but to my knowledge they have not.

Peer-reviewed funding proposals

We also have plans to pursue funding jointly with Baylor College of Medicine from the National Institutes of Health and related federal agencies. Following my discussions with James Patrick of Baylor, we put Baylor Professor Read Montague in charge of coordinating this effort. Montague met with the relevant Rice and Baylor faculty and also consulted with program officers in the relevant federal agencies about our prospects for funding. Montague’s conclusion, which Patrick and I have accepted for the time being, is that we are not yet in a position to be competitive in seeking funding for fMRI-based research, including funding for facilities. It is not that the Rice and Baylor faculty have poor credentials overall; to the contrary, we have a very strong set of faculty with good external funding records. Rather the problem lies with our track record specifically in the area of fMRI research. Our conclusion is that we need to prepare ourselves better by using whatever means we have available to accelerate the pace of fMRI research our Rice and Baylor faculty can conduct. It was toward this end that we prepared the plan to spend income from the Alkek Fund in Neuroscience toward jump-starting our fMRI research based at M. D. Anderson. We hope that this strategy leads us into a competitive position within 12 to 18 months, so that peer-reviewed proposals can be prepared and submitted.

F. Other

Necessary Improvements in facilities

The main need in the category of facilities involves the creation of a neuroimaging facility. As noted elsewhere in this report, fundraising efforts are underway to make this possible.

Other needs and where responsibility lies for resolving them

A brief list of suggested investments to improve the Neurosciences Center and program:

· Completion of a formal plan for the Center for Neuroscience. In my Center report from last year at this time, I expressed the intend to have a proposal prepared during the Spring, 2000 semester. That intent was shaped from the optimism then surrounding our fundraising efforts, optimism that led us to believe we would have the funds in hand soon to acquire a neuroimaging facility. Although I stand prepared to draft this plan during the coming calendar year, my view is that this matter is now less urgent. A formal plan should, however, be prepared no later than one year prior to the expected acquisition of the facility in my opinion.

· Continuation of faculty appointments in areas related to neuroscience. I indicated in last year’s report that the single highest priority at this time is the addition of a new tenure-track faculty member, probably a computational neuroscientist within the Department of Computer Science. Such a faculty member was not hired in the last 12 months, but this priority remains on the top of the list. Coupled with new faculty is added graduate student support, so that we can become competitive with nationally-ranked programs elsewhere. Responsibility for this lies with the Deans, Provost, and President, but the participating faculty and I are of course prepared to do whatever needs to be done to make this happen.

· Expanding the neuroscience initiative to more fully involve other Texas Medical Center and Houston institutions. This will require efforts from individuals at all levels at Rice, from grassroots faculty members to President Gillis. In my view, this matter has assumed greater urgency in the last 12 months for a variety of reasons. Heading the list of reasons, however, is the slacking off in the pace of our fundraising efforts to create a neuroimaging facility. Expanding the circle of partners will both strengthen the academic base of the Center and help us achieve our goals more quickly.

· Establishment of a budget to allow for a speaker series, teaching tools, and related needs. I have prepared no specific funding request on this front this year for two reasons. First, we have had an active, ongoing joint speaker program with Baylor, a program that this year was supplemented by the first, and highly successful, Alkek Lecture. Second, we have the De Lange Conference, devoted this time to Neuroscience, coming up on March 5 - 6, 2001. For the 2001-2 calendar year, we could benefit from a financial boost to this speaker series.

· Continue with the structuring of the neuroscience curriculum, including adding and consolidating courses offered by Rice faculty. This effort involves many hands but I will continue my efforts to manage the process.

· Removing barriers to interaction between the Rice and Texas Medical Centers. These may seem like small matters, but such details as establishing shuttle bus runs between our campuses has proven to be a significant headache for Rice and Baylor staff members, and an even greater headache for the students and, especially faculty, who commute. The same can be said for securing ID cards for Baylor graduate and medical students who are attending joint Rice/Baylor classes on our campus. As I noted in my report last year, if Rice wishes to nurture ties with the Texas Medical Center, we should establish regular, scheduled runs, not simply at the times neuroscience courses are taught but at all times. Ultimate responsibility for this resides with the Provost and the Vice President for Finance and Administration. Toward resolving these issues, Provost Levy has indicated his intent to establish a working committee to investigate and make recommendations to him on all these infrastructure issues.

· Creation of a physical home for the Center. This is not a high priority at this time but will become one as the Center develops. I recommend that a home be created at Rice at the time a neuroimaging facility is established, even if that facility is physically located in the Texas Medical Center.

· Hiring of a Coordinator for the Center, a staff position. The timing of this need would be similar to that for the physical home for the Center, described above.

G. Appendix I.

Neurosciences at Rice planning document (Revision of July 12, 1999). As noted earlier, this original planning document remains available on the web at: www.ruf.rice.edu/~neurosci/proposal5.htm <http://www.ruf.rice.edu/~neurosci/proposal5.htm>. This revision contains a few sections that are out of date, e.g., on neuroscience course offerings, but these elements will be corrected on the next long range planning cycle. Current information on course offerings can be found on the neuroscience website at www.ruf.rice.edu/~neurosci/ <http://www.ruf.rice.edu/~neurosci/>.