Cluster focus

Functional brain imaging represents noninvasive methods to provide temporal and spatial pictures of higher-level brain functions. The goal of the cluster is to provide infrastructure for interdisciplinary brain imaging research at UW-Madison. This group helped to develop an entirely new interdisciplinary research facility, the Waisman Laboratory for Brain Imaging and Behavior, one of the most well-equipped and well-staffed state-of-the-art facilities in the world dedicated to affective and cognitive neuroscience research with brain imaging. The facility, partly supported by the W.M. Keck Foundation, is staffed with scientists across many disciplines. The cluster effort has been critical in coalescing faculty from across campus and helping the laboratory to flourish through the study of the functional and structural organization of the brain.

Cluster accomplishments

  • The cluster and affiliate faculty won a prestigious National Institutes of Health $11 million center grant. The presence of the cluster and related topnotch faculty have made UW-Madison an international magnet for some of the best postdoctoral trainees in functional brain imaging.
  • Since the cluster and affiliated faulty arrived, new research activities related to functional brain imaging grew tremendously. These faculty members received more than $15 million in research grants and have published more than 50 articles in major journals.
  • Cluster faculty involvement, along with affiliates at the Waisman Center, were crucial to winning a major National Institute of Mental Health grant to study autism. These faculty have worked together on numerous other grants to better understand mental retardation.
  • The cluster faculty all work together to teach a new course on human brain imaging, and one cluster member teaches a new course on Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI). Several graduate dissertations have been written based on research conducted at the Waisman Laboratory for Brain Imaging and Behavior with guidance from cluster faculty.
  • The cluster and affiliates help scientists across the world better understand human brain imaging and help inform these scientists’ clinical work by distributing tools on the Web.

Cluster structure

The faculty who put the cluster proposal together have remained involved from the beginning. Based on the success of the two cluster faculty hires, the Waisman Laboratory for Brain Imaging and Behavior quickly recruited related scientists in other departments to join their effort. Several affiliated faculty and academic staff are as essential to the mission of interdisciplinary brain imaging research as are the cluster faculty. The cluster and affiliated faculty represent a remarkable model for interdisciplinary success and come from physics, statistics, psychology, engineering, radiology, medical physics, neurology, medicine, psychiatry and sociology.

Cluster coordinator, faculty and lead dean

Cluster Coordinator

Cluster Faculty

Lead Dean