Department of
Psychological and Brain Sciences

Jeff Alberts’s 51-year career at IU-Bloomington began about ten days after he completed his Ph.D. at Princeton University. After college experiences at Bard College in New York State and McMaster University, a public university in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada, he moved directly into graduate school, initially at McMaster, where he pursued a newfound interest in animal behavior. There, he specialized in wild rat behavior, particularly questions concerning how these animals recognize members of their own colony versus intruders from another colony. 

After acquiring a master’s degree in comparative psychology, he transferred to the neuroscience and behavior program at Princeton. He continued studying naturalistic aspects of behavior by focusing on the “world” of squirming infants under a mother rats’ body, where the pups suckled and interacted with siblings and the mom. He also began integrative analyses of a basic social behavior – huddling with littermates, which led him to expand his knowledge of olfactory development, body temperature regulation, and maternal behavior. From then on, he began identifying as a specialist in developmental processes.

Suddenly, in 1974, Alberts was an assistant professor of psychology at IU with a laboratory in a semi-abandoned cement block building on 13th Street. With grants from NSF and NIH, the lab grew in size and scope. In addition to psychology faculty who supported his early efforts, additional colleagues were found in Biology, Chemistry, Medical Sciences, even in Uralic and Altaic Studies!  He moved quickly through the ranks, and by 1983 was a tenured, full professor in psychology. A Research Scientist Development Award from the National Institute of Mental Health enabled him to explore the various research areas that comprised his interests. A MERIT Award from NIH helped extend his lab’s primary research program, which was to pursue the developmental pathways by which an infant rat becomes a social being. His approach was broadly integrative but anchored in behavior of individuals and groups. He made much progress in olfactory studies and its relations to social attachments. He also pursued studies of suckling and early feeding.

One night, still at work in his office, Alberts received a telephone call from a stranger who had learned about his studies of sensory development in rat pups. The caller, a neuroanatomy professor at Case Western Medical School, was part of a team of U.S. investigators sponsored by NASA, who were participants in international Kosmos satellite flights hosted by the Soviet Union’s Institute for Biomedical Problems. The Soviet hosts were planning to launch ten pregnant rats into space on their Kosmos satellite, which would land right before the due date for births. Was Alberts interested in testing sensory functions and behavior of the first mammals to gestate in space? Yes, indeed! It was a successful experiment conducted under extreme conditions, and it set him on an unusual, parallel trajectory, both internationally and in the U.S. space program. With encouragement from NASA, Alberts founded a company, STAR Enterprises, Inc., (STAR is RATS spelled backwards), which won a series of Small Business contracts. He had accumulated experience as a “bioengineer” who combined knowledge of animal behavior with an understanding of how to design and build habitats for rats and mice to live in the weightless environment of orbital flights. Eventually, STAR Enterprises became the prime contractor responsible for the rodent habitats for the International Space Station. While this effort, spanning about a decade, brought over $25 million into Indiana’s economy, the U.S. Laboratory on the ISS was cancelled – and STAR’s contract was the final one scrubbed. Alberts remained active in the space biology community. He was a board member of both national and international space science organizations, and president of the American Society of Gravitational and Space Biology. In 2013, he joined old and new colleagues for a mouse study on another Russian satellite.

Back on Earth, his basic research flourished, and he was lured into service in the IU-Bloomington research community, becoming associate dean for research in a newly founded office of Research and the University Graduate School (RUGS). Those activities, in parallel with his own research, teaching, and the company’s growth were especially rewarding and enjoyable. Alberts found great pleasure in helping faculty colleagues fulfill their research aspirations. As his activities expanded in RUGS, his title shifted to associate vice president for research. After about 12 years with RUGS, he returned to full-time teaching and research, which by then included studies of oxytocin, genetic “knock-out” mice, and computational modeling of individual and group behavior.  Such breadth was accomplished with the great efforts of his graduate students and post-docs, the mentoring of whom was another one of Alberts’s joys.

It had become clear to Alberts that his basic research with fetal and infant rats related to biomedical concerns of human infants born prematurely. A new NIH grant allowing him to be mentored in neonatology brought him to the renowned Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center. There, his mentor was one of the investigators with whom he shared rats on a Space Shuttle flight! He found the work intellectually rewarding and deeply meaningful, especially during bedside activities in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU). Alberts’ decision to retire from his full-time faculty position was motivated in part by his desire to blend his animal research with studies of ultra-early premature infants and create a new research program in the Cincinnati NICU, where his work has moved into increasingly exciting domains.