Holmes and the NIH Neuroscience Training Program
James Holmes, the 24-year-old suspect in the 2012 Aurora, Colorado theater shooting that killed 12 and injured 58, held documented connections to several federally funded research institutions. In the aftermath of the massacre, police and federal authorities reportedly instructed laboratories and academic programs associated with Holmes to refrain from speaking with the press.
Holmes was one of six recipients of a National Institutes of Health Neuroscience Training Grant at the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus in Denver. He held a Bachelor of Science in neuroscience from the University of California at Riverside. Though he withdrew from the doctoral program at Anschutz in June 2012, he had given a presentation there in May on Micro DNA Biomarkers as part of a course on the biological basis of psychiatric and neurological disorders.
Following the shooting, two buildings on the Anschutz campus were evacuated despite Holmes already being in custody. No official explanation was provided for the evacuation.
The Anschutz Campus and Its Military Origins
The Anschutz Medical Campus occupies the former site of the U.S. Army’s Fitzsimons Army Medical Center. The campus was established with a $91 million grant from the Anschutz Foundation, created by Philip Anschutz, a billionaire with holdings spanning oil, railroads, and media properties.
Fitzsimons had been a center for DARPA-funded research involving brain-connected neuroprosthetic limbs for soldiers injured in combat. The facility’s history of military medical research placed it at the intersection of neuroscience and defense applications.
The Salk Institute and DARPA Connections
In 2006, at age 18, Holmes worked as a research intern at the Salk Institute at UC San Diego in La Jolla. During the two years preceding his internship, the Salk Institute had partnered with the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) on research aimed at preventing fatigue in combat troops. The project studied epicatechin, a flavanol found in dark chocolate that increases blood flow and dilates blood vessels.
This research fell under DARPA’s broader Peak Soldier Performance Program, which explored brain-machine interfaces, human-robotic bionics for limbs and eyes, and other technologies intended for battlefield applications. The program operated in coordination with the Defense Science Office and multiple academic institutions including Columbia University, UC San Francisco, the University of Wisconsin at Madison, and Wake Forest University.
A Family Background in Defense-Adjacent Work
Holmes’s father, Dr. Robert Holmes, held a PhD in Statistics from UC Berkeley (1981) and had worked from 2000 to 2002 at San Diego-based HNC Software. HNC specialized in neural network technology and had collaborated with DARPA since 1998 on developing cortronic neural networks, systems designed to allow machines to process sensory input in ways that mimic human cognition. The technology was pioneered by HNC’s chief scientist and co-founder, Robert Hecht-Nielsen. HNC later merged with Fair Isaac Corporation (FICO), where the elder Holmes continued his career.
Holmes’s grandfather, Lt. Col. Robert Holmes, was among the first graduates of the Army Language School’s Turkish language program in 1948. The school later became the Defense Language Institute in Monterey, California. Military officers with Turkish language skills typically served in intelligence-related assignments through the Defense Intelligence Agency or CIA at U.S. diplomatic posts in Turkey.
Questions About Neuroscience and the Limits of Brain Research
Terrence Sejnowski, the Francis Crick Professor at the Salk Institute, made a notable observation in a 2008 interview about the state of brain research. Referencing cognitive psychology researcher Alan Newell, who had worked at the RAND Corporation, Sejnowski remarked that advances in understanding the human brain had accelerated dramatically since the founding of artificial intelligence research, adding that scientists now knew “perhaps more than we need to know” about the brain.
The documented intersections between Holmes’s academic work, his family’s professional history, and federally funded neuroscience and defense research programs raised questions that extended beyond the criminal case itself. These connections highlighted the opaque boundary between civilian academic research and military applications in the field of neuroscience.