Steve Maren to lead Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology (

Steve Maren, a neuroscientist who studies the neurobiology of emotional learning and memory, will become the next director of the Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. He will join the institute on August 16 and will serve as interim director until his appointment is approved by the Board of Trustees.

Maren is currently the University Distinguished Professor and Charles H. Gregory Chair of Liberal Arts at Texas A&M University. He is also affiliated with TAMU’s Institute for Neuroscience. He earned his bachelor’s degree in psychology at Illinois before completing master’s and doctoral degrees in neurobiology at the University of Southern California. Maren started his career at the University of Michigan before joining TAMU in 2012.

Maren has been continuously funded by the NIH since 1995 and brings over $4.5M in current NIH funding to the U. of I. His research program is broadly focused on understanding brain regions and circuits that are important for memory retrieval, including memories for traumatic events. Maren’s work has international reach, and he is among the most highly cited behavioral neuroscientists in the world. He has mentored 37 graduate students and postdocs and serves on the editorial board of Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews, Learning & Memory, and Hippocampus. He also has extensive administrative experience. At TAMU, he has served as the Dean’s Research Fellow, and Chair of the Council of Principal Investigators, while at Michigan he led the Neuroscience Graduate Program.

Read the full story at https://go.illinois.edu/DirectorMaren