The NIH Center for Structural and Functional Neuroscience was established at The University of Montana as a Center for Biomedical Research Excellence (COBRE) through the Institutional Development Award (IDeA) program of the National Center for Research Resources (NCRR). The research mission of the Center is to utilize approaches at the interface of chemistry, biochemistry, pharmacology, toxicology and molecular biology to advance our understanding of protein structure and function in the central nervous system, particularly as related to signal transduction, transport, development and pathogenesis. The Center is also intended to serve as a core around which to develop infrastructure that benefits a much broader range of basic, clinical and translational biomedical research efforts in Montana. Multidisciplinary by design, Center investigators hold faculty positions in the Department of Biomedical and Pharmaceutical Sciences, the Department of Chemistry and the Division of Biological Sciences at The University of Montana-Missoula. In addition to the Missoula campus, Center investigators are also located at the McLaughlin Research Institute in Great Falls and at Montana State University.