Neuroscience Department at Lake Forest College

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Neuroscience Department at Lake Forest College

Our students are exploring brain function in depth and addressing current ideas regarding thought, behavior, and neuropathology.

The Neuroscience Department at Lake Forest College offers an interdisciplinary major and minor and prepares its students for a diverse range of professional careers through its curriculum, and focus on research, communication skills, and internships. Combining the rigorous study of psychology with biology, few subjects integrate the sciences and connect it with humanities and social sciences better than neuroscience, one of the fastest growing areas in science. Neuroscience students pursue independent original research with faculty on topics as diverse as neural plasticity, human memory, applied cognitive psychology, child development, evolution of animal behavior, neurodegenerative disease, cellular physiology, and the genetics of organ development. While our interdisciplinary training provides an excellent background for launching into the graduate health professions, including medical school, it also prepares graduates for diverse scientific and other professions. Our students have the opportunity to be selected to the national neuroscience honorary Nu Rho Psi. Students enjoy a strong focus on critical writing and persuasive communication by participating in the award-winning student research journal EUKARYON. The student organization SYNAPSE fosters a vibrant student and faculty community focused on public education and outreach on neuroscience issues. Many neuroscience majors study abroad at the University of Auckland in New Zealand (where they take neuroscience courses and can engage in neuroscience research), or in Tanzania or Costa Rica . Some pursue off-campus study in Chicago or conduct research at nearby Rosalind Franklin University of Medicine and Science, engage in community outreach, and partner with North Chicago elementary schools for K-6 education. For their scholarship and educational outreach activities, neuroscience majors regularly receive recognition from professional societies, at the local and national level and become published scholars. Our majors and minors annually interact with scientific professionals and the research community at the Chicago Society for Neuroscience conference. In 2011-2013 alone, they have won research prizes at three Chicago area conferences and the 2011 Brain Awareness Week Award from the international Society for Neuroscience (SfN).

11/06/2025

We love this!

10/31/2025

Final Day of 2025 Brain Awareness Week!
What an intellectual feast being served up this evening with 51 posters of original interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary scientific research by 70 Lake Forest College students and alumni featuring collaborations with over 40 faculty at the college and beyond!

For our final day (Friday, October 31), the Neuroscience and Psychology Departments are delighted to invite you to the Undergraduate and Alumni Research Poster Session of the Thirteenth Annual Robert B. Glassman Memorial Brain, Mind and Behavior Memorial Symposium. It will be held in-person from 4:30-6:30 pm in Calvin Durand Hall (Mohr Student Center) tomorrow (Friday) evening.

Featuring the scholarly work of 70 students and alumni with mentorship by over 40 faculty at the college, Rosalind Franklin University, Northwestern University, Princeton University, Michigan State University, University of Minnesota, Vanderbilt University, and University of Wisconsin Madison

A public reception begins at 4:00 pm, sponsored by the Chicago Society for Neuroscience.
4:30 P.M. Welcome and Unveiling of the 2025 Nu Rho Psi Neuroscience Art Sculpture (2025 Theme: Neuropolitics), featuring the work of the fall art installation course taught by Associate Professor of Art and Art History David Sanchez-Burr
4:45-6:10 P.M. Poster Viewing (51 research presentations by current students and recent alumni)
6:10-6:30 P.M. Closing Ceremony, Celebratory Remarks by Lake Forest College President Michael Sosulski and Recognition of all 70 student scholars

Our sincere thanks for such enthusiastic support for each of these past four days of events in this year’s Brain Awareness Week and helping organizers make it so successful for the students and the college.

10/30/2025

The Departments of Psychology and Neuroscience and the neuroscience student organization Synapse you to Day Four or Brain Awareness Week which features the Thirteenth Annual Robert B. Glassman Memorial Brain, Mind and Behavior Symposium’s Faculty and Alumni Talks, held in-person in the Tarble Room (Brown Hall) from 7-9 pm today Thursday (October 30).

In honor of our late Professor of Psychology and Neuroscience Robert (Bob) Glassman, this two-day interdisciplinary symposium will feature scholarly work of our faculty, students, and alumni. The first day of the symposium will highlight an exciting array of five interdisciplinary talks conducted by three faculty colleagues and two distinguished life sciences alumni that are completing their PhDs at major research universities. The diverse range of topics span child development, brain cancer, music and the mind, population health, and neurodegenerative disease.

Day 1: October 30 Faculty and Alumni Talks, 7:00-9-00 pm, Tarble Room
6:30 P.M. Reception (co-sponsor: Chicago Society for Neuroscience)
7:00 P.M. Welcome Remarks, Synapse
7:05 P.M. Self-Organization: Lessons from Infant Eye Movement Naomi Wentworth, Ph.D., Chair & Associate Professor of Psychology, Lake Forest College
7:25 P.M. Unlocking Silent Synapses on Metastatic Tumor Cells Aiden Houcek ‘20, Ph.D. candidate, Pharmacology Department, Vanderbilt University
7:45 P.M. Music as Magic Donald Meyer, Ph.D., Professor of Music, Lake Forest College
8:05 P.M. Stress and Colorectal Cancer: Implications for Patient Outcomes and Health Equity Zoe Walts ’21, Ph.D. candidate, Department of Population Health Science University of Wisconsin Madison
8:35 P.M. Powerful Yeasts Model Deadly Brain Diseases Caused Toxic Protein Shapes Shubhik DebBurman, Ph.D., Deane Professor of Biological Sciences, Lake Forest College
8:55 P.M. Closing Remarks, Synapse
Please do join us for this exciting symposium and bring your friends and peers.

All BAW events are open to the public.

10/29/2025

The Lake Forest College Departments of Psychology, Neuroscience and Economics, Business, & Finance, the Entrepreneurship and Innovation Program, the American Marketing Association, and the honor society Nu Rho Psi, invite you to the third day and Annual Mind and Society Dialogue Lecture of the 2025 Brain Awareness Week:
October 29: Tenth Annual Mind and Society Dialogue, 4:15 pm on Teams
The Great Happiness Sabotage: How Brains and Bucks Can Undermine Happiness, by Rajagopal Raghunathan, Ph.D., Zane Centennial Professor Business, McCombs School of Business, University of Texas Austin.
This seminar is on Teams and the link can be requested by contacting Dr. DebBurman.
"Raj Raghunathan is Zale Centennial Professor of Business at the McCombs School of Business at UT Austin. He is interested in how people’s judgments and decisions impact their happiness and fulfillment. Raj’s work has appeared in top journals such as The Journal of Marketing, The Journal of Consumer Research, The Journal of Marketing Research, and The Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. His work has also been cited in several mass media outlets, including The Atlantic, The New York Times, Fortune, Forbes, and Harvard Business Review. Raj’s Psychology Today blog, Sapient Nature, has over 2.5 million page views. His online course on Employee Happiness, was rated as a Top MOOC (Massive Open Online Course) of 2019, and currently has over 10,000 students. His previous MOOC has over 500,000 students from 196 countries, and was voted the Top MOOC of 2015, 2016, 2017, & 2018, and is currently one of the Top 250 MOOCs of all time. Raj’s book, If you’re so smart, why aren’t you happy?, has been translated into 13 languages, and was featured in the Atlantic, Time, Guardian, Times of India, Live mint, and Mid-day. Raj’s TED talk was viewed live (on STAR TV) by over 17 million people worldwide."

10/28/2025

The Departments of Neuroscience and Biology, the Health Professions Program and Future Health Professionals, and honor societies TriBeta and Nu Rho Psi, invite you to the Nu Rho Psi Keynote Lecture on the second day of the 2025 Brain Awareness Week:
October 28th Nu Rho Psi Keynote Lecture, 4:15 PM, Tarble Room
“The SuperAging Research Initiative: Lessons on Resistance and Resilience in Brain Aging” by Emily Rogalski, Ph.D., Rosalind Franklin Professor of Neurology, University of Chicago.

Join us for a pre-seminar public reception from 3:45 pm.
All BAW events are open to the public.

"Dr. Emily Rogalski is Rosalind Franklin Professor of Neurology at the University of Chicago where she is Director of the Healthy Aging & Alzheimer’s Research Care (HAARC) Center. She is a clinical and cognitive neuroscientist, and her research falls under the broad umbrella of aging and dementia. She operationalized the SuperAging phenotype and has helped to establish the unique biologic, molecular, genetic, and psychosocial features associated with SuperAging. She currently leads the SuperAging Research Initiative which holds promise for identifying protective factors for avoiding Alzheimer’s disease, optimizing health span, and reducing stigma and negative expectations associated with aging."

10/27/2025

The Lake Forest College Departments of Neuroscience, Education, Philosophy, and Philosophy, the Legal Studies and Public Policy Programs, the Ethics Center, and the neuroscience honor society Nu Rho Psi, were delighted to sponsor the first day and the Opening Keynote Lecture of the 2025 Brain Awareness Week:
"Science and Education for Good - How Neuroscience can Create a more Informed and Equitable World (Particularly in this Geopolitical Moment)"
Melina Uncapher, Ph.D., Founder and CEO, Scientific and Engineering Technical Assistance R&D (SETA-ED)
October 27, 4:15 pm, Tarble Room
All BAW events are open to the public.

"Dr. Melina Uncapher is the founder and CEO of SETA-ED, and a former university professor of educational neuroscience, most recently with labs at Stanford and UC San Francisco. She was a co-founder and Chief of R&D of AERDF, one of the premier education R&D nonprofits in the US. Uncapher has over two decades of experience in scientific research, technology development and engineering, data science, and data privacy and security. She brings together educators, researchers, and developers to co-create transformative solutions to problems of practice using rigorous science-of-learning insights and the wisdom of educators. Her academic publications have been cited over 4000 times, and are highlighted in outlets including the New York Times, PBS, and Frontline; her science outreach work includes a Script Supervisor role on PBS's ‘The Brain’, and an award-winning short film about the brain. She founded a multi-university network funded by the National Science Foundation to study how executive function skills develop in real-world classrooms and co-founded a science-for-good nonprofit that equips educators and students with practical tools based on learning science. She was also funded by the National Institutes for Health to study how technology use is associated with developmental changes in student cognition. She earned her PhD in Neurobiology from the University of California, Irvine and completed postdoctoral fellowships at Stanford University."

10/17/2025

The Neuroscience Department at Lake Forest College is delighted to invite the college community and the public to our upcoming 23rd Annual Lake Forest College Brain Awareness Week (BAW) (October 27-31).
BAW is an annual academic week of outreach and education on interdisciplinary topics that connect the science of our Brain, Mind, and Behavior to social and humanistic issues that affect contemporary global society.
Join in-person: For first and second Keynote Lectures on October 27 and 28 and the Thirteenth Annual Robert B. Glassman Memorial Brain, Mind, and Behavior Symposium on October 30 (faculty/alumni talks) and October 31 (student/alumni scholarship)
Join on Teams: For our Annual Mind and Society Dialogue Lecture on October 29
More details here:
https://www.lakeforest.edu/news-and-events/explore-aging-future-of-education-happiness-at-brain-awareness-week

10/15/2025

The Neuroscience Department at Lake Forest College is thankful to our eight visiting alumni (Dr. Pooja Acharya '17, Cade Brittain '19, Dr. Yoan Ganev '19, Estella Tcaturian '21, Bilal Khan '22, Alyssa Silva '23, Tracey Nassuna '23, and Maurissa Edwards '24)for evening of sincere appreciation, camaraderie, empathy, encouragement, and motivation! Leave it our amazing science alumni to share their authentic personal journeys of self exploration, determination, work ethic, and support for each other as community.
Thanks for sharing both your struggles and successes as each of you carved out your individual college experience and determined your diverse career paths.
Our current students could not enough of all your nuggets of practical wisdom You make all so proud!

10/09/2025

Week #2 of hands-on brain neuroanatomy at Lake Forest College! First-year introductory neuroscience students dig deep into preserved human brains to understand the complexity of how our brain helps us to sense, integrate, and engage in behavior. Nothing gets more real than learning from actual human brains!

10/03/2025

The Neuroscience Department at Lake Forest College welcomes all prospective and current majors to our annual fall alumni panel that highlight eight young and distinguished eight medicine, law , biomedical research, and diverse pathways within the allied health professions.
Join us at from 7:00 8:15 pm, on October 14 (Tuesday) in Lillard 044. A community receptions begins at 6:30 pm in the lower level lobby of the Lillard Science Center.
Come learn more about our vibrant community of highly motivated student scholars, highly dedicated professors that emphasize mentorship and advising, rigorous interdisciplinary curriculum that emphasizes experiential learning and imparts strong scientific communication skills. The outcomes are obvious: since when our major began in 2010, over 70% of our alumni have headed for postgraduate studies within five years of graduation!

Address

555 N Sheridan Road
Lake Forest, IL
60045

Website

https://www.lakeforest.edu/academics/programs/neuroscience/

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