UCSF Building is One of the Nation’s Largest Neuroscience Centers

A new era recently began with the opening of the UCSF Joan and Sanford I. Weill Neurosciences Building. This building creates a collaborative hub for one of the largest neuroscience centers on a campus that is home to Nobel-Prize winning nervous system and brain research.

The facility, which was designed to foster connections among scientists and clinicians in neurology, neurosurgery and psychiatry, will serve as a global destination for researchers to develop treatments for intractable brain diseases. The six-story building at 1651 4th St. will be the new hub for the UCSF Weill Institute for Neurosciences and the UCSF headquarters for the Weill Neurohub, a research collaboration with the University of California at Berkeley and the University of Washington that was launched in 2019 to support cross-campus research.

Together with the nearby Sandler Neurosciences Center, Arthur and Toni Rembe Rock Hall, Genentech Hall and soon-to-be-opened Nancy Friend Pritzker Psychiatry Building, the facility will bring together the most innovative researchers in the field. The building will also serve as a cornerstone of neurological care for UCSF Medical Center.

“This is a remarkable time for neuroscience,” said S. Andrew Josephson, MD, professor and chair of the UCSF Department of Neurology and a member of the steering committee for the UCSF Weill Institute for Neurosciences. “The UCSF Weill Neurosciences Building will stand as a beacon of hope, striving to push the frontier of what we know about the brain and expand the possibilities for effective treatments.”

Among the new building’s priorities is folding psychiatry research from the new Oberndorf Research Labs into the neuroscience program to accelerate understanding of the brain and develop novel treatments for psychiatric disorders such as autism, depression and schizophrenia alongside advances in neurology.