The University of Utah launches new undergraduate neuroscience major

What happens in the brain when you fall in love? Why does a stroke rob one person of speech but leave another's language intact? How does a childhood trauma reshape the architecture of memory? These are the kinds of questions that animate neuroscience, one of the most consequential fields in all of modern science. Not to mention exhilarating.

The University of Utah is offering its first undergraduate degree specifically designed to help students pursue those questions and many more while preparing for a coveted career in life and health sciences.

The new undergraduate degree (Bachelor of Arts/Science) in Neuroscience, which received approval this past April and launches in fall 2026, is jointly seated in two of the university’s most storied academic units: the Department of Psychology in the College of Social and Behavioral Sciences, and the School of Biological Sciences in the College of Science. The program is also deeply connected to the university’s health sciences campus, home to a nationally recognized graduate Neuroscience Program that has long been a hub of cutting-edge brain research. Together, these partners have built something the entire Utah System of Higher Education has never had before: a rigorous, integrated, four-year neuroscience degree for undergraduates.

Science of the brain and all it touches

Neuroscience is, at its most fundamental, the study of the nervous system—how it is built, how it works, and what happens when it breaks down. But within that deceptively simple definition lies an enormous range of approaches and perspectives.

At the cellular and molecular level, neuroscientists examine the biology of individual neurons: the proteins that allow them to fire, the chemical signals they exchange at synapses, the genetic instructions that guide their development. At the systems level, researchers ask how networks of neurons work together to generate vision, movement, memory, or emotion. And at the cognitive and behavioral level—the domain most closely associated with psychology—scientists study how those neural systems give rise to perception, decision-making, and mental health.

The distinction between a “biological” and a “psychological” approach to the brain is real but ultimately complementary. A biologist working on a neural circuit might ask: how do these cells connect, and what signals do they send? A psychologist studying the same circuit might ask: how are such circuits activated, and what does a person (or an animal) actually do as a result? The brain, in other words, is a machine that generates behavior, and understanding it fully requires looking at both the mechanism and the output.

The new U major is designed to hold both perspectives at once. “Neuroscience is inherently interdisciplinary: you can’t fully understand the brain from a single level of analysis,” says Jacqueline Walsh-Snow, professor of cognition and neural science in the Department of Psychology who serves as the program’s inaugural director. “From the psychology side, we focus on how neural systems support perception, cognition, memory, decision-making and behavior. When that is combined with biological approaches at the cellular level and quantitative approaches from mathematics and data science, students gain a much more complete picture of how the brain works.”

Academic major whose time has come

The idea for the degree originated with then College of Science Dean Peter Trapa and College of Social and Behavioral Sciences Dean Michelle Camacho, who recognized an opportunity to build something neither department could accomplish alone. Both the School of Biological Sciences and the Department of Psychology had long offered neuroscience-related courses, and student demand had been evident for years.

 “We knew there was interest from undergraduate students across campus based on enthusiasm for brain-based courses in the psychology department, the number of students double-majoring in biology and psychology, pre-med students and numerous requests to develop a focused major in neuroscience,” says Sarah Creem-Regehr, professor and chair of the Department of Psychology, who co-led the program’s development alongside Fred Adler, professor of mathematics and director of the School of Biological Sciences. “We are seeing neuroscience majors develop at universities across the country, and they are extremely popular and successful in cross-disciplinary education.”

 What made the collaboration work, Creem-Regehr notes, was a remarkable convergence: both departments had been independently moving toward the same idea at the same time. “Once Fred and I started talking more in depth, we realized that a collaborative approach across our two departments would be the most exciting and successful direction,” she says. “I hope the neuroscience major will be an example for how departments across the Colleges of Liberal Arts and Sciences [LAS] can find synergy and common goals.”

 For Adler, the new major also fills a notable gap. “At many universities, neuroscience is one of the most popular majors, bridging exciting new discoveries with important applications,” he says. “The entire Utah System of Higher Education had no such major, and we wanted to build on the broad neuroscience community created by the graduate program.” A particular goal, he adds, is ensuring that students headed toward clinical careers have grounding in basic biology, while those bound for research understand the implications of their work for patient care and mental health.

Biology, psychology and the power of data

The curriculum rests on three interconnected pillars. Biology anchors students in cellular and circuit-level mechanisms which illuminate how neurons are built and how they communicate. Psychology addresses the systems and behavioral level, connecting neural processes to the real-world experiences of perception, memory, and emotion. And a third pillar of quantitative methods, mathematical modeling, and data science gives students the tools to work with the voluminous datasets that modern neuroscience generates.

That third pillar is more than just a technical skill set. Walsh-Snow points out that neuroscience has actually played a foundational role in the development of many tools now associated with artificial intelligence: “Advances in neuroscience continue to inform the development of machine learning and AI, making this exchange between fields both dynamic and mutually reinforcing.” Students, she emphasizes, need to understand not just how to use these tools, but their origins, assumptions and limitations.

Adler, whose home discipline is mathematics, frames the integration in ambitious terms. “AI and other information technologies are transforming teaching and research,” he says, “and students who want to be prepared for the new world need to have two main strengths: the quantitative skills to harness these new technologies most effectively, and the intellectual depth and breadth needed to deeply understand the field and to change with the changing times.”

He invokes Nobel laureate Peter Medawar to capture the spirit of the collaboration: “Medawar said that every trait is 100% nature and 100% nurture—and we want this major to have that same seemingly paradoxical mathematics.” In other words, the biology and psychology of the brain are not competing explanations; they are two complete and complementary accounts of the same phenomenon.

Bridge to both health sciences and the frontier

One of the most distinctive features of the new major is its formal connection to the University’s Health Sciences campus, where the Department of Neurobiology in the School of Medicine and the graduate Neuroscience Program have long cultivated a world-class research community. Faculty from that program will contribute to the new undergraduate degree, and students will have access to research experiences that were previously available only to graduate trainees.

Moriel Zelikowsky, assistant professor in the Department of Neurobiology and a 2025 HHMI Freeman Hrabowski Scholar, is among the Health Sciences faculty engaged with the new undergraduate program. Her lab studies the neuroscience of social isolation—research with implications she finds both urgent and profound.

 “The brain is one of the most complex organs, and we still really only understand a small fraction of it—there’s just so much left unexplored,” she says. “It really is the new frontier, especially when you consider some of the most cutting-edge tools that are coming online right now to answer questions we’ve had for a very long time.”

What makes neuroscience uniquely compelling as a discipline, Zelikowsky argues, is the rare combination of philosophical depth and experimental possibility. “There are very few areas where you not only get to contemplate the important and deep questions, but then you can actually walk into a lab and design an experiment to test something you think about,” she says. “That full circle is really rare.”

She is also keen to challenge the perception that neuroscience is unapproachably technical. “I do find neuroscience to be more accessible to people from different backgrounds,” says the former film major who pivoted to philosophy of science as an undergraduate. “A lot of times in the sciences, the point of entry feels really high. What’s nice about neuroscience is that other core values are emphasized: Are you a deep thinker? Do you have the drive to do experiments? It feels very accessible, and I think that’s one really nice thing about it.”

Creem-Regehr echoes this point from her own research perspective. Her work spans cognitive neuroscience and computer science, and she sees the new major as a natural extension of how neuroscience is actually practiced. “In teaching research methods, we emphasize the critical importance of asking questions and applying methods at multiple levels of analysis,” she says. “The connections to the School of Computing and to the Department of Neurobiology will open doors for students to participate in research and support both computational and neurobiological training.”

Training, not just informing scientists

Walsh-Snow is emphatic that the program is designed to produce graduates who don’t just know about neuroscience, but who know how to do it. “We want students to graduate not just with knowledge, but with experience in how neuroscience is actually done through research, quantitative methods, and engagement with real-world problems. That’s what makes them competitive for graduate programs and impactful in their future careers.”

A signature feature of the curriculum is a capstone methods course that exposes students to a wide range of approaches—from functional MRI and EEG to behavioral psychophysics and computational modeling—and trains them to think critically about what each type of data can and cannot reveal. “A central theme is the value of converging evidence: understanding how different methods, each with their own strengths and limitations, can be combined to answer fundamental questions,” Walsh-Snow explains.

The new major is also, by design, a proving ground for the University’s recently reorganized College of Liberal Arts and Sciences. By drawing on faculty from two colleges, connecting to graduate programs, and integrating quantitative training from mathematics and data science, the degree demonstrates what interdisciplinary collaboration within LAS can look like in practice—not merely as a matter of shared administrative services, but as genuine intellectual synthesis.

Workforce-ready

The timing of the new major reflects more than intellectual enthusiasm. The neuroscience-life sciences workforce is expanding rapidly, driven by demand in pharmaceutical research, medical technology, clinical neuropsychology, data science and the rapidly growing field of AI which is deeply shaped by brain-inspired models of computation. Nationally, neuroscience is among the fastest-growing undergraduate majors, and graduates with rigorous training in both biology and quantitative methods are sought after across a broad range of industries.

For Utah, the new degree positions the university as a genuine player in the state’s expanding life sciences economy. Utah has become an increasingly prominent hub for biotech, health technology and medical research. Homegrown talent trained at the undergraduate level is essential to sustaining that momentum. A robust pipeline of neuroscience graduates equipped with research experience, quantitative fluency, and clinical awareness strengthens both the university and the broader regional workforce.

Adler sees the program as an investment not just in students but in building the university’s scholarly reputation. “These goals will challenge us as instructors,” he acknowledges, “and open doors for new research.” That double aspiration of teaching students to think rigorously while opening new lines of inquiry for faculty may be the surest sign that this new program will endure.