Our Crowdfunding Groups
The Helen Wills Neuroscience Institute at UC Berkeley is helping us deepen our understanding of the brain and the rest of the nervous system through original research and neurotechnology innovation. We are also training the next generation of neuroscientists as undergraduates in our labs. However, many students from historically underrepresented backgrounds experience barriers to participating in training because of extremely limited *paid* opportunities to conduct research at the undergraduate level.
Crucial to increasing diversity in Neuroscience is providing underrepresented students access to opportunities for research at the undergraduate level. Undergraduate research is the launch pad of all scientific careers, and students shouldn't have to choose between a paid student job or unpaid research.
Please join the students of the Neuroscience and Psychology departments in supporting Research Experience Pathways (REP). The success of this campaign will have a real impact on students' lives, and open up the option of research to many who would otherwise not have the opportunity to take part in it. All funds raised from this campaign will go toward making research experiences accessible to students from all backgrounds, which includes subsidizing costs for posters, stipends, student fees, and other programmatic costs.
As a REP scholar, our students will:
With your support, we can encourage and welcome driven undergrads to stretch their ambitions and abilities — and diversify the perspectives and strengths of our community as we push out the boundaries of knowledge — to the benefit of patients, families, and the common good.
This covers the cost of one poster for one student. Equivalent to the short-lived plasticity boost from a paired pulse in electrophysiological experiments. A little push can go a long way.
Contributes toward our goal of providing one student the opportunity to conduct research for a full semester.
Contributes toward our goal of providing one student the opportunity to conduct research for a full semester. In the same way, local mRNA translation allows for dendritic regulation largely independent from the cell body, this sponsorship empowers undergraduates to focus on research without worrying about money.
This covers one students' fees for two semesters, plus the poster for the poster session. This allows them to be paid for their time in lab independently of the lab's funding, for the entire duration of the program. Equivalent to the larger spatial scale plasticity that allows for neurons within a area perpendicular to the brain's surface to achieve similar functionality, and stability like the columns of the Parthenon.
This covers two students' fees for two semesters, plus each of their posters. Fund two students and we can achieve a better chance of community and support systems that will help students remain in the program and research more broadly. Just like people, brain regions don't work in isolation, and this tier is equivalent to the song and dance of neural dynamics that give rise to cognition.
This covers six students' fees for two semesters, plus each of their posters. Fund six students and we can achieve a better chance of community and support systems that will help students remain in the program and research more broadly. Two students are a pair but six is a whole cohort, in the same way that two brain regions interacting are functionally connected brain regions, but six brain regions working in unity flexibly allows for more global brain state dynamics.
This covers twelve students' fees for two semesters, plus each of their posters. Fund twelve students and we can achieve a better chance of community and support systems that will help students remain in the program and research more broadly. To round out this metaphor, with enough brain regions, we may uncover the secret stuff of consciousness, qualia, that turns our brain into something more intangible, the mind. With enough students working together they can work together towards something more than the sum of their parts, a supportive and intellectual community.
