OneHourAhead

University College London seems to have been chosen by the Wellcome Trust and the Gatsby Charitable Foundation to host a new £140-million centre dedicated to the research of neural circuits and behaviour. From the UCL website:

The Gatsby Charitable Foundation (Gatsby) is delighted that the Wellcome Trust (Wellcome) is collaborating with them for the purpose of developing a new Research Centre in Neural Circuits and Behaviour, to be called the Sainsbury–Wellcome (S–W) Centre, and to support individual researchers in the field of Neural Circuits and Behaviour elsewhere in the UK and the Republic of Ireland. Gatsby and Wellcome, advised by an international panel of eminent neuroscientists, have selected University College London (UCL) as the preferred host for the Centre. It is hoped that a final decision and formal agreement with UCL will be reached before the end of the year. Further information about the initiative will be made available in due course.

UCL already has a strong neuroscience department so this will really set out the university and London as being the centre for neuroscience within Europe.  From Nature News:

The institute will reportedly work mainly with model organisms such as mice, fruitflies and nematodes. It will employ newly developed techniques such as optogenetics, which allows researchers to switch genetically modified neurons on and off using light. It is believed that the institute will eventually host some 12–15 research groups at a new £60-million building on Huntley Street in Bloomsbury, near both the Wellcome Trust and UCL’s central campus.

Exciting (if you’re a neuroscientist)