James McCutcheon wins big research grant to start ambitious project

James earned his PhD at University College London, after which his spent a couple of years as a postdoc in Chicago. He returned to England as an associate professor of neuroscience at the University of Leicester, where he gained more experience running his own research team and developed ideas for research projects that ultimately led to this grant proposal.

The new project James will start, is connected to a phenomenon he has long been interested in. What are the mechanisms in the brain that cause animals to get the nutrients that they need, and what happens if something in those mechanisms goes wrong? Animals have a finely tuned sense of procuring the appropriate mixture of nutrients to survive. The intake of protein for example, appears to be regulated in many animal species. To learn more about these the underlying brain mechanisms, the project will use cutting-edge techniques, that enable us to look at the activity and communication of specific groups of brain cells in and between specific brain areas. 

With the new grant, James will purchase the necessary equipment, and set up a specialized research team, which will initially consist of two postdoctoral researchers.