The mission of The Institute for the Brain and Cognitive Sciences (IBACS) is to serve as both a beacon and incubator for research across the brain and cognitive sciences at UConn and beyond; promoting and supporting the interdisciplinary science of the mind and its realization in biological and artificial systems. It will enable new research and educational opportunities for graduate students, postdoctoral researchers, and faculty to extend their intellectual reach beyond traditional disciplinary boundaries, as well as enabling undergraduates to receive laboratory-based training in neuroscientific, behavioral, and theoretical research in the brain and cognitive sciences. It aims to provide the physical, financial, administrative, technical, intellectual, and educational infrastructure to enable UConn’s extensive but distributed neuroscience and cognitive science community to realize its full potential for disciplinary and interdisciplinary innovation in the brain and cognitive sciences.

The Institute will be an essential hub and engine for innovation in the interdisciplinary science of mind and brain at UConn, within and across traditional areas of strength – language plasticity, neurobiology of language, dynamical systems science (modeling systems that undergo continuous change), language and logic, philosophy of mind, evolution of communication, language acquisition (typical and atypical), learning, reading, and communication disorders, neurophysiology, behavioral neuroscience, and molecular genetic neuroscience, among others. It will provide the infrastructure and resources for developing emerging links with bioscience, biomedical engineering, education, physics, and mathematics, and for nurturing connections between these and other domains within the schools and colleges of UConn.

The Institute’s commitment to outreach, translational research, and public service will cement its position as a state-wide educational and research resource for the public, educators, policy makers, health professionals, and industry.