Donations

Thank you for your interest in supporting the work of the Department of Neuroscience. Gifts to the Department of Neuroscience and to the funds sponsored by the department can be made through the internet by clicking the links below, or by mail.

Donata Oertel Fund for Neuroscience
Donata Oertel became the founding chair of the Department of Neuroscience in November 2014. Earlier in her career, she served as chair of neurophysiology (beginning in 1996) and interim chair of physiology (beginning in 2009). A nationally renowned researcher in the neurobiology of hearing, Oertel earned her undergraduate degree in zoology at the University of California-Los Angeles, a doctorate from the University of California-Santa Barbara, and completed postdoctoral training at UW-Madison and Harvard. Her research program on how the brain perceives and processes sounds was internationally recognized. In 2018, Oertel was named a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in recognition of her work on the cellular basis for the processing of acoustic information in the mammalian cochlear nuclei, and for service to the neuroscience community. She and her research team helped the world understand how neurons translate sounds into meaningful information. Her work on mammalian auditory processing has been fundamental in elucidating how certain types of hearing loss occur. Contributions to this fund will honor the legacy of Dr. Donata Oertel by supporting need-based undergraduate student research in neuroscience.

Click here to donate to the Donata Oertel Fund for Neuroscience

Clinton Woolsey Lectureship Fund
Clinton N. Woolsey (1904-93) was Charles Sumner Schlichter Professor at the University of Wisconsin from 1948 until his retirement in 1978. His studies of cerebral, cerebellar and thalamic architecture, localization and organization contributed substantially to our understanding of the brain. Dr. Woolsey and his colleagues at Wisconsin were responsible in no small part for the present broad interest in neuroscience. Dr. Woolsey established the Lab of Neurophysiology which became the Dept. of Neurophysiology in 1976 and has now become the Dept. of Neuroscience. Dr. Woolsey was awarded the Ralph W. Gerard Prize, the Franklin P. Mall Award in Anatomy, the Medal of the Faculty of Medicine of the Free University of Brussels, and the Distinguished Service Alumni Award from Johns Hopkins. He was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 1960. A few years before his retirement the annual Woolsey Lecture in Neuroscience was established. Contributions to this fund will help to keep the Lecture going and help celebrate his career.

Click here to donate to the Woolsey Lecture Fund

Jerzy Rose Award Fund
Jerzy E. Rose (1909-1992) was born in Poland and trained in Medicine, Psychiatry and Neuroanatomy, the latter under his famous uncle Maximillian Rose as well as with Oskar and Cecile Vogt. He immigrated to the US in 1939 after Germany occupied Poland and settled at the Johns Hopkins University where he met Clinton Woolsey and established a life-long scientific and personal link. His early work was in cytoarchitectonics and comparative and developmental studies of the diencephalon. He published a series of papers with Woolsey culminating in the now classic study of thalamocortical relations of Rose and Woolsey (1949). In 1960 he left Johns Hopkins to join Woolsey at the University of Wisconsin where he proceeded to form one of the foremost laboratories of auditory research in the world by taking up single unit electrophysiological studies of the brainstem auditory centers. He shared the Ralph W. Gerard Award from the Society for Neuroscience with Woolsey, was awarded the Association for Research in Otolaryngology Award of Merit, and was elected to the National Academy of Sciences. Upon his retirement his colleagues established the Jerzy Rose Award in Neuroscience to honor the most outstanding graduate thesis in neuroscience at UW-Madison. Contributions to this fund will allow us to continue awarding this prize to honor his illustrious career.

Click here to donate to the Jerzy Rose Award Fund

To Donate:
Gifts to the funds can be given for the Oertel Fund, Woolsey lecture, and the Rose Award via the below links:

Donata Oertel Fund for Neuroscience
Clinton Woolsey Lecture Fund
Jerzy Rose Award Fund

You can also write a check. Gifts by check should be made payable to the University of Wisconsin Foundation, with designation either specified (Oertel fund, Woolsey lecture, Rose award, or all three) in an accompanying letter or memo section of the check. Gifts should be mailed to:

UW Foundation
U.S. Bank Lockbox
Box 78807
Milwaukee, WI 53278-0807

Thank you for your generous support!