The NYU-ECNU Institute of Mathematical Sciences at NYU Shanghai is dedicated to the development of a unique research and training environment to advance modern mathematics and its applications. The Institute works in close partnership with New York University’s Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences and East China Normal University’s Department of Mathematics.

Research work at the Institute will be patterned after the style of mathematics that has become the trademark of the Courant Institute since its founding in 1935: strong, dedicated and talented mathematicians working on problems of important scientific, technological, social, or economic consequences and developing the mathematical and computational methods to solve these problems. The research interests at the Institute include theories and applications of probability, nonlinear partial differential equations, fluid dynamics, biology, materials science, computational neuroscience, and mathematical finance.

The Department of Mathematics at ECNU was founded in 1951. In 1996 the department was listed as one of the national bases in China for basic research in science and talent training in mathematics. The Department of Mathematics has strengths in pure mathematics, applied mathematics, computational mathematics, and math education. The Department is an influential math research and education base both in and out of China.

The Institute aspires to attract scientific and mathematic talents to Shanghai.

The NYU-ECNU Institute of Brain and Cognitive Science at NYU Shanghai is a research institute dedicated to the development of a unique research and training environment to advance the understanding of brain function in health and disease. The primary goal of the Institute is to understand the mechanisms by which neural circuits in the brain generate higher cognition and flexible behavior, and their impairments associated with brain diseases such as autism, schizophrenia and Alzheimer’s disease.

The Institute leverages the existing significant strength of neuroscience research at NYU and ECNU: systems and cognitive neuroscience broadly defined, using a range of tools including the development of transgenic primates, molecular and physiological studies of neural circuits, experimental analysis of behavior, microcircuit and large-scale neural circuit modeling, and human brain imaging.

A focus is on the prefrontal cortex (PFC) which plays a central role in many cognitive functions. The core institute research areas include studies of the neural basis of working memory and choice behavior using single-neuron recordings from the PFC of behaving monkeys and rodents; computational modeling of the PFC and its interplay with the rest of the brain in decision-making, memory, selective attention and executive control; and imaging research on human language. The Institute will grow to have more than twenty research groups, as well as many collaborating faculty from NYU in New York and elsewhere.