This award will support the inaugural meeting of the Southeast Neuroscience Consortium (SENC). This organization was created by the merger of the Southeast Nerve Net (SENN) (founded in 1983) and the Georgia South Carolina Neuroscience Consortium (GA/SC-NC) Since its inception, the focus of SENN meetings has been comparative neuroscience while that of the GASCNC has been systems neuroscience. Thus, meetings of the SENC will encompass the spectrum of modern neuroscience. The primary goals of meetings of the SENC will be to provide a forum for students and early postdocs to give talks in a supportive environment where they get exposure to a large audience and, at the same time, allow neuroscientists from across the South East to come together. The majority if not all oral sessions will be set aside for students, thereby providing them a rare opportunity to fine tune their speaking skills before encountering the more impersonal audiences they would likely encounter at large national (i.e. Society for Neuroscience) or international meetings. To facilitate student participation, a significant portion of the award will be assigned to cover the travel costs of student participants. A major effort will be made to attract students from two year colleges, where neuroscience is typically poorly represented, and Historically Black Colleges and other minority institutions. All told, we expect this meeting will enhance student training, enhance collabora
The purpose of this grant was to provide partial support the inaugural meeting of the South East Neuroscience Consortium, an informal assembly of neuroscientists from southeastern states. This organization grew from the merger of the South East Nerve Net and the Georgia/South Carolina Neuroscience Consortium. Unlike most other scientific conferences, a specific goal of this meeting was to provide graduate and undergraduate students with the opportunity to present the results of their research before a learned but unfamiliar (i.e. not their home institution) audience composed of neuroscience faculty and students. In keeping with this goal, the bulk of the oral presentations were reserved for students rather than faculty. In addition to the short oral presentations, the three-day meeting included a poster session and 3 keynote lectures by eminent scientists, one of whom was invited specifically to address the issue of data sharing. Awards for best student oral presentation and best student post were presented at the conclusion of the meeting. The meeting had 176 registrants drawn from a broad range of institutions in several south eastern states and included faculty and students from historically black colleges, together with local high school students. Additional support for the meeting was provided by the University of Florida and participating institutions.
