The Harvard PhD Program in Neuroscience (PiN) is centered in the Harvard Medical School Department of Neurobiology, founded in 1966 as the first research department in the world to take an interdisciplinary systemic approach to studying the brain as an organ, and spans the neuroscience community across the University. The program provides mentoring and advising to a close and supportive community of students who carry out PhD research in laboratories on the Harvard Medical School Quadrangle (the Quad), in Harvard-affiliated hospitals, and at Harvard’s Center for Brain Science under the Faculty of Arts & Sciences in Cambridge. PiN students come from a wide range of scientific, personal, and cultural backgrounds. More than 150 faculty members provide exciting and rigorous research training in all areas of neuroscience to our 120+ students, preparing them for careers across many sectors from academic research to science policy, biotech, pharmaceuticals, consulting, K-12 and community education, science writing and outreach, “big data,” and other developing fields. We are dedicated to educating students so they develop as neuroscientists who will change science in the 21st century and beyond.
About
“People think science is - you have a white coat, you have to look serious - and we had a different attitude. We were curious, we had fun. We felt more like explorers than scientists.”
- Torsten Wiesel
“It’s a huge privilege to be able to work on whatever you’re curious about. Science is scary because you don’t know what’s gonna happen - if you did it wouldn’t be science - and I think that’s most clear in a department like this, where people have core values of curiosity and intense engagement in each other’s work.”
- Rachel Wilson