1994: Former-Dean Robert J. Birgeneau congratulates Professor Susumu Tonegawa on the occasion of the announcement of the Fairchild Foundation grant.

The Picower Center for Learning and Memory at MIT was founded in 1994 with a major grant from the Sherman Fairchild Foundation. Under the visionary leadership of the Center's Director Susumu Tonegawa and then-head of the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, Professor Emilio Bizzi, the Picower Center undertook a new initiative in a largely unexplored area of neuroscience - the biology of learning and memory. The early Picower Center consisted of four newly recruited junior faculty who held appointments in the Departments of Brain and Cognitive Sciences and Biology at MIT. Dr. Mriganka Sur became the Fairchild Professor of Neuroscience in 1998.