The University of Minnesota faculty, alumni, and researchers have won 29 Nobel Prizes in a variety of fields including physiology or medicine, physics and chemistry. The University of Minnesota is one of America's Public Ivy universities, which refers to top public universities in the United States capable of providing a collegiate experience comparable with the Ivy League. The Twin Cities campus has the sixth largest student body in the United States, with 54,890 students in 2023-24. The Kara and Zimmerman labs are part of the Medical Discovery Team (MDT) in Optical Imaging and Brain Science and the Center for Magnetic Resonance Research (CMRR). This MDT is a multi-disciplinary effort focused on mapping the detailed neural circuits that underlie sensation, perception and complex behaviors. State-of-the-art optical imaging and optical stimulation techniques that provide sub-micron spatial resolution are used in experimental model systems of health, injury and disease. Collectively, the approaches and instrumentation developed in CMRR constitute some of the most important tools used today to study system level organ function and physiology for basic and translational research and are increasingly applied worldwide. The CMRR is currently at the forefront of the Human Connectome project and has among the highest field strength magnets in the world.