Harald Sontheimer to direct university-wide neuroscience initiative and new Virginia Tech Carilion Research Institute center
April 29, 2015
Harald Sontheimer, a professor of neurobiology at the University of Alabama at Birmingham and a nationally recognized neuroscientist and expert on the biology of glial cells, the brain’s most abundant cell type, will direct a university-wide neuroscience initiative being launched within Virginia Tech's College of Science.
Established last year, the neuroscience initiative is an interdisciplinary program based in the College of Science's Academy of Integrated Science. Starting this fall, undergraduate students at Virginia Tech may declare neuroscience as their academic major. The initiative will also include the recruitment of multiple new neuroscience faculty members to Virginia Tech’s Blacksburg campus.
In addition to his appointment as a professor in the College of Science, Sontheimer will join the faculty at the Virginia Tech Carilion Research Institute. There he will oversee his own research laboratory and direct the institute’s new Glial Biology in Health, Disease, and Cancer Center and those of other new faculty members who will be recruited to the center.
