NB&B offers a broad range of courses and research opportunities for undergraduate students, making it the most popular biology concentration at Cornell.
The associated graduate field of Neurobiology and Behavior encompasses all aspects of neuroscience and behavioral research on Cornell’s Ithaca campus. The graduate program's goal is to advance the understanding of neurobiology and behavior by training the next generation of scientists working at this exciting interface.
Academic Resources
Spotlight on BIONB2210/2220
Our teaching mission is to integrate research themes into two flagship courses, BioNB 2210 (Introduction to Behavior) and BioNB 2220 (Introduction to Neuroscience), and to explore them in greater depth in our upper level courses. In the videos below, NBB faculty instructors give an overview of the structure and significance of these two keystone courses:
Student Spotlight: Eliza Baird-Daniel '15
A recent Cornell graduate with a concentration in NBB, Eliza Baird-Daniel fondly remembers her time participating in research in the lab of Professor Jesse Goldberg:
"Dr. Goldberg, in particular, has been an incredible source of encouragement and guidance. I am so honored to have worked with someone who is such a remarkable teacher, and has allowed me the intellectual power and freedom to design experiments and explore scientific questions."
Profiles of Recent NBB Alums
NBB News
From Hornet pride to wasp wisdom
Abi Zuber, graduate student of the department of neurobiology and behavior at Cornell University, helps us explore why we should do research on bugs.
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A&S honors 13 faculty with endowed professorships
The professorships are made possible because of gifts from alumni, parents and friends.
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New $1.5M graduate research fellowship honors former director of the Cornell Lab of Ornithology 
A new $1.5 million gift from philanthropist K. Lisa Yang ’74 has established the Charles Walcott Graduate Research Fellowship in Conservation Bioacoustics to fund graduate research at the Lab of Ornithology.
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Faculty, staff win 2025 SUNY Chancellor's Awards for Excellence
Robert A. Raguso, Professor in the neurobiology & behavior department has been selected to win the 2024-25 State University of New York (SUNY) Chancellor's Awards for Excellence.
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Seventeen Receive Awards Recognizing Inclusive Excellence
Awardees were recognized for the significant impacts they have made to advance access, engagement and belonging through their service and leadership.
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Your January 2025 reads
This month’s featured titles – most by A&S authors – include a work of nonfiction about honeybees, a kids’ picture book, and a novel set in rural Nova Scotia.
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Neuroscientist Antonio Fernandez-Ruiz wins Scialog Award
“This project sits at the cross-roads of neuroscience, ethology and artificial intelligence."
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Evolution is not just survival of the fittest. It’s also survival of the luckiest — and this science proves it
Luck can change life later on. “We wanted to know,” Matthew Zipple, a Postdoctoral Associate in the Sheehan Lab in the neurobiology and behavior department at Cornell University told NPR, “if we create a society where everyone starts out with the same genetics, has access to the same resources in th...
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