In the continuing saga surrounding neuroscience at MIT, the director of MIT’s Picower Institute for Learning and Memory, Susumu Tonegawa announced yesterday he’s stepping down from his position as director, according to the Boston Globe today. He’ll remain a professor at MIT.

This follows on the controversy that began this summer, when he discouraged a young scientist MIT was trying to recruit from accepting MIT’s job offer. She later turned down the offer. A report by a panel of MIT professors released earlier this month said he acted inappropriately, but also laid blame on others involved in the recruitment. The report is no longer available online, after some faculty said it contained inaccuracies. The committee is now reviewing the report.

Questionable faculty recruitment practices and extreme competition between MIT’s two privately-funded neuroscience institutes were at the center of this controversy, so it will be interesting to see who will be chosen to succeed Tonegawa, how that person will be selected and by whom, given the new council the provost created to oversee hiring and recruitment in neuroscience at MIT.