(Karen Augé )  About two months before he sat wild-haired, bug-eyed and dazed as a judge told him he faced murder charges, James Eagan Holmes was supposed to give a presentation on a topic so complex that most people would barely understand its title.
Near the same time he would have been discussing “microRNA biomarkers” with doctoral students and faculty, authorities say, Holmes began amassing the cache of guns and ammunition he used to carry out one of the worst mass shootings in U.S. history.
University of Colorado Denver officials won’t say whether he gave that presentation, listed on the syllabus for a class called “biological basis of psychiatric and neurological disorders.” In any case, Holmes was by then already slipping out of the rarefied world of intellect and scientific discovery that for much of his 24 years had seemed embedded in his DNA.
Holmes took an oral examination June 7 and dropped out of the elite CU Denver neuroscience graduate program June 10.
He is now accused of murder and attempted murder in the deaths of 12 people and the injuring of another 58 during a midnight premiere of “The Dark Knight Rises” on July 20 at an Aurora movie theater.
“Aspiring scientist” In Holmes’ 2010 résumé, he calls himself an “aspiring scientist.” The student experience he listed then, as he applied for lab-technician jobs online, is an impressive catalog of research in neuroscience: the study of the brain and nervous system.
Digitization of mouse muscle. Neuronal mapping of the zebra finch. Dissection, staining and photography of hummingbird flight muscles.
As a lab assistant at the University of California, Riverside, Holmes picked up skills such as dissecting cells and using dye to stain biological tissues before examining them under a microscope, according to the résumé.
No one at CU Denver and few in the broader neuroscience community would talk about Holmes directly. But directors of CU’s neuroscience graduate program described the environment Holmes had entered, and was withdrawing from, as intellectually demanding and rewarding.
Every year, 100 or so budding scientists apply to the CU Denver doctoral program in neuroscience. Ultimately, only about six are admitted, said program director Angie Ribera.