This grant will provide support for trainees at the 8th annual meeting of the Society for Behavioral Neuroendocrinology (SBN) to be held July 26-30, 2004. The meeting will be hosted by the Eco-Ethology Research Unit, Integrative Behavioural Biology Lab, of the Instituto Superior de Psicologia Aplicada at the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation in Lisbon, Portugal. A founding principle of the SBN is a commitment to undergraduate students, graduate students, and postdoctoral fellows. These individuals are the future of scientific enterprise, and the annual SBN conference is an opportunity to enhance their education, reward their efforts, appreciate their contributions, and as they enter the academic community. The SBN is a multidisciplinary, international society that promotes research and education concerning hormones, the brain and behavior. The annual SBN conference brings together scientists from diverse fields, including physiological and developmental psychology, behavioral ecology, animal behavior, chronobiology, psychoneuroendocrinology, neuroscience, cellular and molecular endocrinology, developmental biology, and genetics. In particular, the society encourages the integration of cellular and molecular concepts into a functional framework. The funds from this proposal will be used for three purposes: (1) a Young Investigator's Symposium, in which eight of the most talented postdocs and senior graduate students will present talks (selected by competition and funding used to defray expenses for attending the meeting); (2) smaller travel awards to students and postdocs presenting posters (also selected by competition), and (3) two professional development workshops. The abstracts from talks and posters presented at the conference will be published in Hormones and Behavior, and full manuscripts from the data are then commonly published in a variety of journals focusing on neuroscience, endocrinology and/or behavior.
