Welcome to all prospective applicants to the Neuroscience Program at the University of Urbana-Champaign! You are facing perhaps the biggest decision in your life so far, and I'm very glad you're considering us. Here is a little information to help you make your choice.

The opportunities for you here at Illinois are exceptional. The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign is one of the premier public research universities in the country, with an outstanding and stimulating intellectual environment. One measure of this is that there is no campus in the country that receives more federal funding for research than ours.

The Neuroscience Program at Illinois (NSP) enjoys an outstanding national and international reputation. We are especially known as one of the most comprehensive neuroscience programs in the country, with faculty belonging to 25 different departments in seven colleges (Arts and Sciences; Engineering; Carle Illinois College of Medicine; Veterinary; Agriculture; Education; and Applied Health Sciences). Our students (currently numbering 53) receive broad training from a distinguished faculty of over 100 scientists that includes a member of the National Academy of Sciences and winners of several major national awards. Since the Program's inception in 1971, over 218 Neuroscience Ph.D. degrees have been awarded.

Now is an especially opportune time to consider the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. The new President and Chancellor have announced a new vision for this campus; we aspire to be the top-ranked public university in the country.

The field of neuroscience has grown more rapidly than any other scientific discipline in history and is now poised to solve some of the deepest mysteries and serious problems on this planet: mental illness; consciousness; and understanding how the brain, with its cellular patterns of gene expression and driven by intrinsic and environmental forces, gives rise to organisms as complex as humans. The training you receive at Illinois will empower you to make discoveries that help us unravel these mysteries.

We look forward to seeing you here!

Martha Gillette