HANOVER — Dartmouth College announced last week that it will launch a fellowship in honor of the late neuroscientist David Bucci in the fall of 2021.

The fellowship will formalize a course Bucci, who died last October, taught in his 15 years at Dartmouth.

It will prepare a group of as many as 16 students in their senior year to attend the Society for Neuroscience annual meeting by reading, presenting and discussing articles about a set of topics in neuroscience.

The fellows will then attend the meeting, where they will learn about the latest research in the field and meet the researchers who wrote the papers they have read.

“For students, this is an exciting opportunity,” said Brad Duchaine, the chairman of Dartmouth’s Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, in a June 3 news release. “Not only are they learning about research that’s hot off the presses, they’re also getting to hear from and talk to the authors of these studies. In the field of neuroscience, they’ll be meeting celebrities.”

The fellowship is endowed by Bill Helman, a 1980 Dartmouth graduate, venture capitalist and a former chairman of the college’s board of trustees.

“There are a handful of very special faculty members at Dartmouth,” Helman said in Monday phone interview. “Dave Bucci was one of those.”

Helman said Bucci stood out for his scholarship and teaching, as well as for the role he played in the Dartmouth community.

Bucci was “such an incredible guy (and an) incredible human being,” Helman said.

Bucci, who specialized in the study of memory and learning, chaired the PBS department from 2015 through last June. During his tenure, Dartmouth faced a class-action lawsuit related to the sexual misconduct of three former faculty members in the PBS department.

Bucci died by suicide last October at age 50. While he had a history of depression, his wife, Katie Bucci, told The New York Times that she felt stress associated with the lawsuit played a role in his death.

A federal judge granted preliminary approval to a $14 million settlement in the case in late January.