Study Women
Collective support for the advancement of groundbreaking research in women’s brain health
More than 50,000 brain-imaging studies have been published since the 1990s. Fewer than 0.05% consider factors specific to women. That half of one percent is all we know about how the menstrual cycle, pregnancy, contraception, and menopause affect the brain. At the same time, 70% of Alzheimer’s patients are women, and two out of three people who suffer from depression are women. The gender knowledge gap is stark.
The Ann S. Bowers Women’s Brain Health Initiative (Bowers WBHI) was created to change that. Launched in 2023 with a start-up endowment from the Robert N. Noyce Trust, the Bowers WBHI is headquartered at UC Santa Barbara and unites seven University of California campuses, Stanford, and Cornell. It is the first largescale, collaborative effort focused on closing the gender gap in neuroscience. Its vision requires bold benefactors.
“We seek to fund opportunities that could have an impact on a large number of people before funders like the National Institute for Health and others would support at this level. We’re risk takers in that sense. We’re seed money for bold ideas,” said Michael Groom, a trustee of the Noyce Trust.
Ann S. Bowers was one of the only female executives in the semiconductor industry during the founding of the tech industry in the 1960s. She served as the first director of personnel for Intel Corporation and the first vice president of human resources for Apple. She also was the wife of the late Robert N. Noyce, Intel co-founder and inventor of the integrated circuit, which gave Silicon Valley its name. After Robert’s passing, Ann became a visionary philanthropist.
“There was a lot of broken glass on the floor whenever Ann was in the room,” said Michael. “It’s fitting that the Noyce Trust has found an area where we can focus on breaking more glass ceilings by focusing on women’s health.”
By pooling thousands of MRIs with standardized metadata on mood, medical history, and reproductive health, the Bowers WBHI is building a “Brain Bank,” the most comprehensive resource ever created for understanding women’s brain health. All data generated for the Bowers WBHI are made publicly available through the efforts of Professor Russ Poldrack and his team at Stanford University.
The Bowers WBHI has leveraged this data to produce the world’s first map of the human brain during pregnancy and is launching one of the most ambitious studies of menopause and brain health ever attempted. These two moonshot projects reveal how pregnancy and menopause may shape a woman’s lifelong risk for neurological diseases like the dementia that Ann suffered — insights that could change prevention and care.
Seed funding from the Noyce Trust provided the stability and infrastructure to pursue ambitious projects. A partnership with the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative advanced the development of the first personalized digital twin of a woman’s brain from Bowers WBHI data. This work earned the researchers a 2025 TIME magazine Best Invention of the Year award.
The project applies machine learning and AI tools to reveal the changes that occur across pregnancy, advancing our understanding of the brain’s capacity for extensive plasticity in adulthood. The open-access dataset and AI models will provide an interactive map of the brain during pregnancy and the postpartum period. Ultimately, the goal is to develop predictive models that capture a person’s risk for postpartum depression well before behavioral symptoms emerge. The AI techniques developed will also be applicable to other transformative life stages, from adolescence to menopause. New awards from the Wellcome Trust and the National Institutes of Health will support these efforts.
“UC Santa Barbara’s leadership and collaborative approach, uniting expertise in neuroimaging, data science, and women’s health, makes it the ideal partner to advance this pioneering work and ensure the resulting tools and insights are widely shared for the benefit of all,” said Kristen Maitland, senior program manager at the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative.
“These transformative investments in our Ann S. Bowers Women’s Brain Health Initiative reflect a shared vision for open, collaborative science with the potential to improve health outcomes worldwide. We are incredibly grateful to the Noyce Trust and the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative for their investment in and commitment to the kind of interdisciplinary, data-driven research that defines scientific discovery at UC Santa Barbara,” said Shelly Gable, Susan and Bruce Worster Dean of Science.
The absence of women from science — as researchers and as subjects — isn’t just about the cost to women. It’s about the cost to the world. The Bowers WBHI is generating the right data to close this knowledge gap. The world has witnessed a stunning growth in human brain imaging research over the last 30 years, and the Bowers WBHI is at the forefront.
“These investments are opening up new frontiers for breakthroughs in neuroscience,” said Emily Jacobs, director of the Bowers WBHI and professor of psychological and brain sciences. “The generous support of our donors allows us to focus our full attention on the health of women. Additional support means we can expand our initiatives and accelerate the pace of discovery.”
Published November 2025
We seek to fund opportunities that could have an impact on a large number of people before funders like the National Institute for Health and others would support at this level. We’re risk takers in that sense. We’re seed money for bold ideas.
Michael Groom, trustee of the Noyce Trust
