Proposal to Establish a Neurophysics Group in the Department of Physics and Astronomy Introduction The Department of Physics and Astronomy at the UR has had a long standing interest in the field of Biological Physics, represented by the research program of Prof. Robert Knox, a recipient of the 1994 Biological Physics Prize of the American Physical Society. Tom Foster, Prof. of Imaging Sciences in the Medical Center, received his Ph.D. from the Department as student of Prof. Knox, and has held a joint appointment in Physics and Astronomy since 1992. However since Prof. Knox’s retirement in 1997 the Department has had no primary appointment in Biological Physics. At the same time, the field of Biological Physics has experienced a period of rapid growth, with most leading Physics departments seeking to establish programs in this area. The 1997 report of the Department’s Faculty Recruiting Strategy Committee (FRS) concluded that there was a consensus in the Department in favor of a new recruitment in the field of Biological Physics. However, due to the constraints on Department size under the University’s Renaissance Plan, and the need to maintain strengths and balance in traditional core areas, only one full time position was projected for an effort in Biological Physics. In the Fall 1998, following the FRS report, a Committee to Explore the Future of Biological Physics was constituted. The Committee was charged with educating the Department about the field of Biological Physics, and in particular to consider the rationale for an appointment in Biological Physics within the Department of Physics and Astronomy, to investigate the environment for interdisciplinary activity in Biological Physics at the University, and to gauge the potential for the success and impact of such an appointment. In April 2001, after a series of University wide interviews, the Committee submitted its final report (attached as Appendix D), which was accepted by the Department. The report identified three areas of Biological Physics that seemed the best potential targets for recruitment: (i) probing biological systems at the single molecule scale, (ii) neuroscience, and (iii) bioinformatics. The report concluded that: • Biological Physics is an exciting and rapidly growing sub-field of physics that is actively being pursued by a large fraction of the top physics departments in the country. • A very favorable environment currently exists at the University for a successful appointment by the Department in the field of Biological Physics. • The field of Biological Physics should be given high priority for the next available faculty recruitment. In its effort to continue exploring the above fields of Biological Physics, the Department invited Karel Svoboda of Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL) to give a Department colloquium in November 2003. Svoboda is an internationally recognized pioneer in the use of multi-photon microscopy to image neural activity in the living brain. Svoboda’s visit generated considerable excitement in the Department. Moreover Svoboda, in private discussions, made it clear that he intended ultimately to leave CSHL. Although CSHL offered excellent support in the life sciences, he viewed that his efforts would be limited by the absence of technical support in advanced optics and electronics. Svoboda indicated that he viewed Rochester favorably, but that he was looking to make a move to a university that would be making several coordinated hires in his area. In response to this visit, the Chair of Physics and Astronomy initiated discussions within the University to see if it might be possible to recruit Svoboda to UR. While there was strong support for this in Physics and Astronomy, as well as other Departments at the University, this effort ended when there appeared no way to coordinate the recruitment of the several positions that Svoboda indicated would be necessary for him to move. Svoboda subsequently left CSHL this past summer for the new Howard Hughes Medical Institute Campus at Janelia Farm. The Department’s experience with Svoboda highlighted the following points: (1) High quality candidates exist that would be eminently fitting for an appointment in Physics and Astronomy, and that such candidates can be attracted to the University if we are allowed to make competitive offers, and (2) Our ability to attract the highest quality candidates will be greatly increased if we are able to make multiple faculty recruitments in a focused field. However such multiple recruitments necessitate the ability of the Department to grow modestly beyond its Renaissance Plan size. In response to the College’s strategic planning exercise, the Department thus proposes a bolder initiative than that originally envisioned by our Committee to Explore Biological Physics. For the reasons detailed in the remainder of this proposal, the Department seeks College support to establish a new group in the field of neurophysics, i.e. physics as it relates to neuroscience (target (ii) of the 2001 Biological Physics Committee report). The conclusions of the following sections of this proposal may be summarized as follows: • Neurophysics represents an opportunity for Physics and Astronomy to enter early into a promising and growing field of Biological Physics. • A group in neurophysics within the Department of Physics and Astronomy will leverage unique strengths at the University and help to establish an interdisciplinary program in brain research at UR that will be a world leader. • The Department should establish a group of three faculty in the field of neurophysics consisting of a mix of theory and experiment. One of these positions would be the Biological Physics position allocated according to the Department’s last long range strategic plan (FRS). Two new positions would be created by growth in Department size. The building of such a group should take place in consultation with leading physicists outside the University who are working in this area. Based on such consultations, different paths might develop: hiring one senior level researcher who will then provide direction and mentoring for recruiting the rest of the group; hiring simultaneously more than one senior researcher; hiring over a span of several years a group of outstanding junior level researchers. Below we outline our arguments in support of this proposal. We start with a brief discussion of the historical and present day context for neuroscience as an area of Biological Physics. We then present the case why the University of Rochester is in a unique position to play a leading role in this area. In Appendix A we review several speakers who have visited the Department recently, and comment on them as models for the sort of people and programs we might seek to recruit. In Appendix B we include letters of support from related programs in the College. In Appendix C we give a list of links to people and programs mentioned in this proposal. In Appendix D we attach the 2001 report of the Department’s Committee to Explore the Future of Biological Physics. Neuroscience and Biological Physics The discipline of physics has had a long history of major contributions to the field of neuroscience, from the experimental foundations of the field of electrophysiology during the time of Galvani, to the theoretical and experimental contributions of Helmholtz on axons, to the work of Cole on ionic transport through biological membranes and its influence on the subsequent work of Hodgkin and Huxley. More recently, new theoretical ideas and experimental techniques from physics have continued to make a significant impact on the field. In theory, ideas from statistical physics have been applied in developing models of neural activity, information processing and computation in the brain. Perhaps the best known example of such theoretical work is the seminal work of John Hopfield (current president of the American Physical Society) on “spin glass” models of neural networks. Other leading theoretical physicists in this area include Bill Bialek (Princeton), Haim Sompolinsky (Hebrew University), Larry Abbott (Columbia), Terry Sejnowski (UCSD), Sebastian Seung (MIT) and Wulfram Gerstner (Lausanne). The role that theoretical physics has to play in modern neuroscience is evidenced by two recent workshops held at the Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics at UC Santa Barbara: Dynamics of Neural Networks, July 23 - Dec. 22, 2001, and Understanding the Brain, July 19 – Oct. 1, 2004. Another symposium recently organized by the Institute for Complex Adaptive Matter was, Frontiers in Biological Physics III: Neural Biology, July 18-20, 2004, Aspen. The recognition by the neuroscience community that physics has an important role to play is evidenced by the creation in 1994 by the Sloan Foundation of five Centers for Theoretical Neurobiology (at Brandeis, Caltech, NYU, Salk Institute, and UCSF), whose goal was to “bring young theoreticians from the physical, mathematical and computer sciences into neurobiology.” In 2000, the Swartz Foundation joined in the funding of these centers. The Swartz Foundation, established to “explore the application of mathematical physics, computer science, systems analysis and behavioral psychology to neurobiology,” also supports centers in Computational Neuroscience at Cold Spring Harbor, Columbia, and UCSD. Experimentally, imaging of individual neuronal synapses and networks by multi-photon spectroscopy and other advanced optical techniques have allowed unprecedented investigations of neuronal plasticity