Avi Patel, Contributing Photographer

Yale’s psychology and neuroscience departments, alongside the Wu Tsai Institute — the University’s new hub for neuroscience and cognition — have a newly renovated home at 100 College St.

Located at the southern end of campus, adjacent to the School of Medicine and School of Public Health, 100 College St. is co-occupied by the University, which has seven floors, and global biopharmaceutical company Alexion Pharmaceuticals, which occupies the rest of the building. Although construction of the building began in 2013 and finished in 2015, the interior was only fully completed following donations from Joe Tsai ’86 LAW ’90 and Clara Wu Tsai in 2021. The space is designed to promote multidisciplinary exchange between psychology, an undergraduate college department; neuroscience, a medical school department; and the Wu Tsai Institute, or WTI, a research hub.

“100 College is the physical realization of the goal of sparking interdisciplinary inquiry. In fact, it is the only Yale building, to my knowledge, that houses entire departments from both the Faculty of Arts and Sciences (Psychology) and the School of Medicine (Neuroscience)” Nick Turk-Browne GRD ’09, the director of the Wu Tsai Institute, wrote in an email to the News.

At a dedication ceremony in December, University Provost Scott Strobel called the building a “milestone.” Previously, neuroscience and psychology research facilities were scattered across campus: some were on the Medical School campus while others were located on the opposite side of campus near Science Hill. 

According to Turk-Browne, 100 College St. allows the WTI to serve as connective tissue between faculty across departments and to optimize collaborative research. He also said that the building provides a second home for WTI members who have offices in other University spaces. Before, the WTI did not have its own space. Now, 100 College St. holds its research centers, core facilities and administrative offices.

There are many innovative lab facilities throughout 100 College St. On the building’s first floor lies BrainWorks, a WTI-based research lab core that provides access to the latest devices to track human brain activity. It is equipped with a magnetic resonance imaging scanner, two magnetoencephalography machines, virtual reality gear and all kinds of wearable neurotechnologies. 

The 11th floor, the WTI headquarters, also houses two of its research centers: the Center for Neurocognition and Behavior and the Center for Neurocomputation and Machine Learning. The floor also holds another research core called “The Matrix,” which features data visualization walls, a makerspace and an array of virtual and augmented reality gear. The 10th floor houses the third WTI research center, the Center for Neurodevelopment and Plasticity, along with a new research core for engineering new neurotechnologies. 

Additionally, the 12th and 14th floors house offices and labs for the Department of Psychology, while the second and third floors house those for the Department of Neuroscience. The building’s office spaces feature a wealth of conference rooms and co-working areas. 

Shreya Saxena, a biomedical engineering professor whose lab is in the building, said that 100 College St. is designed to encourage collaboration between people from different fields. 

“My research is inherently collaborative, and from the computational suite on the 11th floor, I can go one flight down in the internal stairway and talk to a neurobiologist, and one flight up and talk to a behavioral psychologist — all looking at similar questions from very different approaches,” Saxena wrote in an email to the News. “This has very much helped my thinking and research directions.” 

Beyond its workspaces, 100 College has many amenities. The building has a gym, a cafeteria and even a game room. Saxena said that the fun spaces offer a place for her lab students to relax after work. 

Still, 100 College St. is not just a place for University faculty and WTI researchers. Students from across the University can take advantage of the building’s different spaces. 

“100 College Street has truly become my sanctuary for studying this semester,” Hiren Parekh ’26, a sophomore at Yale College who often uses the study spaces at 100 College, wrote in an email to the News. “Its contemporary ambiance, paired with the breathtaking views of New Haven, sets it apart from the other study spots scattered across Yale’s campus.” 

The building is open to all University affiliates from 8 a.m. to 7 p.m. on weekdays.