UC Irvine … brain.
Brain … UC Irvine.
That’s the memory association UCI recently bolstered with the addition of one of the nation’s top neuroscientists, Dr. Thomas Carew, as the university’s third Donald Bren Fellow.
UCI, already considered one of the leading learning and memory research centers in the world, lured Carew and his 10-person research staff away from Yale University, where he had worked since 1983. Carew chaired Yale’s department of psychology from 1991 to 1997.
He now chairs the Department of Neurobiology and Behavior in UCI’s School of Biological Sciences and is a faculty member of the Center for the Neurobiology of Learning and Memory. Neurobiology is the study of the nervous system, which includes the brain, the spinal cord and nerves.
“We recruited him vigorously,” said James McGaugh, founding director of the Center for the Neurobiology of Learning and Memory. The whole staff pitched in to help land Carew, he said.
McGaugh’s daughter took Carew’s wife, a kindergarten teacher, around to visit the community schools. She was virtually hired on the spot at one of the local elementary schools, McGaugh said.
Carew, who specializes in human memory, is considered a hot academic commodity because he is a pioneer in the cellular biology of earning, which combines psychology and neurobiology. He works at the cellular level, studying how learning affects the neurons of the brain.
Carew also brings an enthusiasm for teaching.
“I absolutely love teaching,” he said. He describes his teaching style as interactive. “Mainly it’s that I care.”
Although he enjoyed working at Yale, he said, it was time for a change, and UCI was appealing because he considered its department ripe for growth. Moving to the West Coast was relatively painless because both he and his wife are from California. Carew is a graduate of Loyola Marymount and earned his Ph.D. in physiological psychology at UC Riverside. He said he is an ardent surfer and kayaker.
He will be bringing his Yale research staff out in May. It’s a tight-knit group, he said. “We do the best job by having a good time.”
In June, he will add three more neuroscientists to the team. Carew and his researchers will focus on learning, memory and degenerative diseases.
“Memory to me is magical,” Carew said. It’s so magical that scientists never will figure out completely how the brain works, he said. “What we’ll do is chip away at it.”
Carew joins Dr. Sherwood Rowland, a 1995 Nobel laureate, and noted evolutionary biologist Dr. Francisco Ayala as Donald Bren Fellows at the university.
“That’s one of the most distinguished titles you can have on campus,” said McGaugh.
During his tenure at UCI, Carew said, he intends to build the department as well as the entire UCI neuroscience community, which includes the College of Medicine’s Department of Anatomy and Neurobiology, the Institute of Brain Aging and Dementia and the Reeve-Irvine Research Center, which studies spinal-cord injuries. About 60 faculty members and 150 post-doctoral fellows study and teach neuroscience at UCI.
“UCI has a very strong neuroscience community,” Carew said. It’s just a matter of coordinating the efforts of all of the centers and departments so that it is unified. n
