A welcome message from the Behavioral and Systems Neuroscience PhD program director

Welcome to the PhD program in Behavioral and Systems Neuroscience. Our program was initially established in the 1960s as a biopsychology program. Today, we are one of the few programs in the world offering a degree specifically in Behavioral and Systems Neuroscience. Our program is housed within the Department of Behavioral Neuroscience at OHSU, and we draw from faculty within that department, as well as from other basic science and clinical departments at OHSU. We typically have about 30 PhD students in our program at any given time, with research interests that include alcohol and drug effects and addiction, decision making, memory, and aging, among other areas. Our faculty place a heavy emphasis on behavioral approaches that are typically examined using molecular, electrophysiological, viral, optogenetic, and/or in vivo imaging approaches. Our students are motivated by basic questions about behavioral and systems neuroscience that can be answered with any number of different experimental tools, with key interests in translation to humans.

The median time to complete the PhD in our program is 5.3 years. During the fall of the first year, students take an intense introduction to neuroscience course sequence. Our students complete this sequence with first-year students in the general Neuroscience Graduate Program at OHSU. Winter and spring terms are spent rotating in different laboratories, with the goal of matching with a mentor for future dissertation work. Once a lab is selected, students begin to work on independent projects, culminating in a research proposal that is submitted by the end of the second year. Work on the dissertation continues into Years 3 and 4, with the general goal of receiving the PhD in about 5 years.

Our program is highly collaborative, with many students opting for a co-mentorship with two faculty members. These sorts of collaborations allow students to gain expertise in different literatures and with different behavioral and neurobiological techniques.

Students are typically funded by the School of Medicine during the first year, with support coming from training grants, mentor’s research grants, or student grants (such as the NSF Graduate Research Fellowship or an NRSA award) after that. There are no undergraduates at OHSU, but there are opportunities to interact with summer high school and undergraduate interns and to teach at nearby Portland State University and other local undergraduate institutions for those students who would like teaching experience.

Graduates of our program have had long and successful careers in academic research, teaching, and industry. Most graduates move to postdoctoral research positions, but many also go straight to industry, working in fields such as data science, science writing, programming, and pharmaceutical development.

Potential applicants are encouraged to get in touch with us with any questions at BSNGradStudies@ohsu.edu

Matt Lattal, Ph.D.
Professor of Behavioral Neuroscience
Director of the PhD program in Behavioral and Systems Neuroscience

Contact us

General Inquiries & Information
BSNGradStudies@ohsu.edu

Matt Lattal, Graduate Program Director
lattalm@ohsu.edu
1-503-418-2215