The purpose of the competing renewal of this conference travel grant is to continue to facilitate student/postdoctoral involvement (both current members and newer graduate students who are potential members) in the International Society for Developmental Psychobiology meetings. We are requesting partial support of the travel expenses of 30 predoctoral and 20 postdoctoral students for attendance at the annual meetings of the International Society for Developmental Psychobiology over the next five years. The 2000 ISDP meeting will be held in New Orleans, LA, just prior to the Society for Neuroscience meeting. The previous two meetings (ISDP 1998 in Orleans, France and ISDP, 1999 in Coral Gables, FL) have been enormously successful, due in no small part to the travel grants provided by NIH that provided partial support for graduate students and postdoctoral fellows to attend these meetings. At the 1999 meeting, we were able to provide partial travel support for 41 students/postdoctoral fellows, which resulted in the highest student attendance of any ISDP meeting in the past five years. In addition, this funding enabled us to begin a new tradition at ISDP; travel award winners were invited to present select data in a """"""""single-slide"""""""" 5-min talk. Reactions to these presentations were overwhelmingly enthusiastic from both students and senior scientists. Students and postdoctoral fellows are the lifeblood of the society, and it is critical, especially in a small society such as this, to foster a high level of student participation. Indeed, many of the active members of ISDP who are now at or approaching the level of professor first became involved with the Society as students, and many gave their first research presentation at an ISDP meeting. Student travel support remains a critical issue for our society, given the limited nature of travel funds available. Continuation of travel support from NIH will have a major impact on our ability to bring students and postdoctoral fellows to the meeting. Furthermore, support for student travel will enable us to use the limited funds in the ISDP account in ways that will increase the impact of such a grant even further. For example, last year Society funds were utilized to provide partial travel support for four foreign graduate students. The present proposal requests five years of support, to continue to provide funds for partial support of travel for student and postdoctoral fellows to the ISDP annual meetings. Obtaining multiple year support will help to establish a culture of attendance at the ISDP meetings among graduate students at various universities, which will prolong the impact of the grant long after the period of support requested.
